Volunteering at Crossroad has given me a more direct look into the ins and outs of medicine and primary care. As a public health student in undergrad, my studies gave me somewhat of an awareness of healthcare accessibility issues affecting my local Cincinnati community, but I only got to see the behind-the-scenes as a Crossroad intern. Furthermore, the fact that I ended up getting this service opportunity right in the middle of the pandemic gave me more insight into the healthcare system than I had ever gotten from any of my previous experiences or courses.
Learning about health disparities in my classes and from textbooks was one thing, but I’ve had a really enriching experience interacting with Crossroad patients and learning about individual struggles by building connections, something that university courses and textbooks cannot give to my learning. A few months ago if you asked me what I felt were barriers to healthcare, I would have probably listed things like transportation and insurance. While these are very real barriers that I’ve seen serving at Crossroad, I’ve also seen other challenges that patients face on a daily basis: not having providers who can speak their language, simply being unable to make time for appointments due to work, not knowing what their appointment or referral was even about, or having medical debt that prevents them from seeking desperately needed care.
Overall, I’ve appreciated my experience at Crossroad as it has given me a more practical environment to see everything I’ve learned about public health and current community health barriers.
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