The sixth episode of the UMHS podcast, Dextrocardia, features a discussion with second year medical student Allie Funderburk, and debuts Tuesday, November 10, 2020. This is the third installment of our Black Lives Matter (BLM) sub-series, where medical students discuss activism and racial inequity in healthcare.
BLM may be a recent movement, but the struggle for the rights of black Americans is not. In this episode, Nihal interviews someone who has been actively working to advance civil rights since her days in high school. Allie Funderburk shares her experiences over the years and details some of the biggest racial disparities in healthcare.
Allie Funderburk is a second-year medical student at Saba University School of Medicine. She serves as the founder and president of Saba's Student National Medical Association (SNMA) chapter, region 4. She is also the president of the African Diaspora Association. She has been involved within her community from high school to currently helping children with limited resources, mentoring underserved and underrepresented individuals, and helping to advance the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) community by encouraging young, black individuals to pursue their dreams. She has recently taken the reins to make the voices of black medical students heard. She has been in meetings with her university's administration to discuss and implement inclusion within the medical school and the community. She has also been involved with BLM by signing and sharing several petitions to bring justice to those that have been failed by the American justice system.
Dextrocardia features interviews with fellow medical students, medical school faculty, and medical practitioners on everything from how to succeed in medical school, to fighting racial inequality in medicine and how medical students are working in the BLM movement.
Episodes are released every other Tuesday. Dextrocardia is available on Apple Podcast, Spotify and Podbean.
Listen and subscribe to Dextrocardia:
(Top photo). BLM activist & med student Allie Funderburk, interviewed on the latest Dextrocardia Podcast. Photo: Courtesy of Ms. Funderburk.
Scott is Director of Digital Content & Alumni Communications Liaison at UMHS and editor of the UMHS Endeavour blog. When he's not writing about UMHS students, faculty, events, public health, alumni and UMHS research, he writes and edits Broadway theater reviews for a website he publishes in New York City, StageZine.com.
