A Balancing Act with GHP

September 2021

Matt Hing is a fourth-year medical student and second-year anthropology doctoral student at UCLA. His research looks at global primary care and community health, and the broader social effects of community health worker (CHW) programs. He hopes to use his clinical and anthropological training to practice medicine that both contributes to community liberation and attends to the structural determinants of health and illness. Matt is a member of the Global Health Equity Pathway, a past participant of the Global Short-Term Training Program with Partners in Hope in Malawi, and a teaching assistant for this year's Global Health Selective.

GHP: You followed a non-traditional path by applying to graduate school after your third year of medical school at DGSOM. Why did you ultimately decide to pursue a PhD in Anthropology?

Matt Hing: To be honest, it was a very uncertain decision in the moment, but I am so glad that I took the leap! I realized that I had unanswered questions about the long-term social effects that community health worker (CHW) programs have on the workers themselves (the majority of CHWs worldwide are low-income women of color), and felt that training in anthropology would best equip me to make sense of the complicated structural forces and power dynamics at play in these programs. There is a predominant discourse that CHW programs are vehicles of empowerment, but when working in a CHW program in Chiapas, Mexico prior to medical school, my CHW colleagues’ experiences did not always reflect those claims. I could recall several moments when their identities as CHWs disrupted relationships with their neighbors as much as they deepened them, and their critical labor was overlooked and under-compensated by the health system. While at DGSOM, I kept returning to these experiences and reflections, and decided to take a year off after my third year to complete ethnographic research at my former site in Chiapas with support from the Dean’s Leadership in Health and Science Scholarship. With the guidance of my advisors, I recognized that long-term engagement through an anthropology PhD program would provide the time and mentorship to both address my research questions and support the CHWs’ visions for themselves. I was initially nervous about adding even more years to my medical training, but I am confident that the PhD is an investment that will help me engage more deeply as a physician with the broader socio-structural forces that impact patients and their communities.

GHP: You are passionate about so many issues and are actively involved in moving the needle in this constant struggle to improve health equity. For new students just entering DGSOM, can you talk about some of the organizations you have worked with as a medical student, and how you balance it all?

Matt Hing: Absolutely! I feel so humbled to have been in the company of such committed classmates while at DGSOM, and all the efforts that I have been a part of are the result of many years of collective student activism. I served as a medical coordinator for the Mobile Clinic Project at UCLA during my MS2 year and continue to work with its affiliate organization, Companion Care. Both of these organizations accompany unhoused, undocumented, and other marginalized individuals in Hollywood and Santa Monica through weekly street medicine clinics, social support referrals, and care navigation. I was also a co-leader of DGSOM’s Global Health Interest Group, and through it, one of the many students involved in organizing the 2016 and 2017 Los Angeles Global Health Conference (LAGHC). Most recently, I have been involved with Students for an Anti-Racist Curriculum (SARC) — one of many organizing efforts housed under UCLA's Health Equity Hub — to advocate for further anti-racist education and local community investment at DGSOM. A lot of my time with SARC has been spent working as a Structural Racism & Health Equity (SRHE) tutor, collaborating with medical students and faculty to develop the content for the newly established SRHE curricular theme. I have also contributed to the Summer Health Justice Internship, a community-centered pipeline program founded by medical students and the LA Chapter of the Campaign Against Racism.

Frankly, I don’t always do the best job balancing all these efforts, and especially this past year due to COVID-19, there were times when I felt that I needed to step back. I am still trying to get better at slowing down my “yes” responses, and being mindful about diversifying the ways in which I can support various activities. For some groups, that may involve more of a consistently active planning role; for others, it might mean showing up in support of certain events or actions. More than anything, I strongly advise finding a community of students who are also committed to this work - I owe so much to my community for helping me stay grounded and energized in our work when I felt overwhelmed and overstretched.

GHP: Thank you, Matt! We are so grateful for the valuable roles you have played and continue to play in the Global Health Program!