UCI School of Medicine Student Wins National Essay Contest

Kaveri Curlin, a fourth-year medical student who is part of the School of Medicine’s Programs in Medical Education Leadership Education to Advance Diversity — African, Black and Caribbean (PRIME LEAD-ABC), was selected as one of the winners in the 2024 American Board of Internal Medicine’s (ABIM) Building Trust essay contest. 

In this essay contest, current medical students share first-hand experiences of open, honest and difficult conversations with patients and family members whose views or experiences differ from their own. In Curlin’s essay “Breaking Silence,” she tells a story about a patient experience that highlights the stigma of mental health treatment in the Asian American community.   

As a PRIME LEAD-ABC student, Curlin is passionate about studying healthcare disparities and inequities, learning from her mentors while developing leadership skills, and combining her interests in medicine and writing. 

We wanted to learn more about Curlin and her passion for narrative medicine. 

How did you know you wanted to attend UCI School of Medicine? 

KC: I’m from Southern California and grew up in Los Angeles County. I left for college but always wanted to come back to California for medical school. Both my parents went to UCSF School of Medicine. I was born into a very medical family. My sister graduated from UCSF last year and is now a first-year resident in emergency medicine.

I really wanted to come back. I also really wanted to go to a UC med school because I heard great things about being trained at one. I also like the idea of being in a consortium of schools with different campuses. My mom went to UC Irvine as an undergraduate, so we were familiar with the campus and opportunities.  

It was the only school offering PRIME LEAD-ABC. That was important to me because I’ve always been interested in health disparities and health inequities. In my gap years between college and medical school, I did a lot of work studying the social determinants of obesity in African American women. I really liked it and knew that that was a focus of what I wanted to study in medical school, and UCI gave me the opportunity to combine that with my medical school education. 

What made you interested in storytelling as a form of patient advocacy? 

KC: I’d always been kind of interested in writing and narrative medicine. I took an undergraduate class on writing about public health and medicine and discovered a lot of great science writers, such as Atul Gawande. 

When I discovered this field of narrative medicine, it was a way for me to continue something I really enjoy doing, which is creative writing, fiction writing, writing about real experiences. But also, being a health professional and trainee, you’re learning so much and growing so much. It’s a stressful experience and you experience a lot in four years. People have different ways to process that. For me, this was a way to understand the more stressful aspects of being a student.

Why did this experience you write about in your essay stand out for you? 

KC: Patients don’t exist as individuals. They’re part of a network of people, whether it’s their biological family, or their chosen family. They are colleagues, they are sisters, they are churchgoers. There are so many identities outside of what we see in a sterile medical space. This experience resonated with me because we got to see his home life, and hear about his school experience, his relationships with teachers, his friendships, passions, interests.
 
I really enjoyed that because it reminds me of the humanity of everything. It’s not just a collection of vital signs and labs and imaging. This is a person. And they have lots of different identities. Most importantly, in terms of our job, we use this information to treat their underlying condition and help them really get healthy so they can go back to doing all those awesome things they enjoy outside the hospital.  

What do you hope to pursue after you complete your medical degree program?  

KC: I’d love to see patients but also continue to do some teaching, whether it’s with medical students or residents, and continue medical humanities work, whether it’s research or certain elements of the history of medicine. And especially with scientific communication and breaking down the “town and gown” divide, addressing misinformation out there, and making sure the scientific community continues to integrate better with ideas the general public has about us; using common language and being receptive to working with people outside a specific knowledge base.

ABIM’s Building Trust essay contest is an initiative of the ABIM Foundation. It was launched to explore the diverse activities or projects that medical students are engaged in that build trust with their schools, faculty, peers, patients and communities. Essays were submitted by future physicians, nurses, physical therapists and others from more than 40 medical and nursing schools across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Kaveri participated in an essay reading in July as one of the essay winners. Learn more about the Building Trust Essay Contest.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.