Advocating for healthcare equity among underserved communities

Alexandria Kristensen-Cabrera ’16

MD/PhD Student, University of Minnesota

MAJOR: SCIENCE BUSINESS

Alexandria Kristensen-Cabrera ’16 is a third-year medical student and health policy PhD student at the University of Minnesota. Her work is focused on reducing disparities, with a specific focus on the impact of racism, on maternal and infant birth outcomes.

She has dedicated her studies to understand how the intersections of class, immigration, disability, race, and ethnicity impact health outcomes. Her dissertation research follows her previous work on maternal and child health, including research on breastfeeding practices, medical education, and improving the safety and quality of perinatal care.

After becoming an executive board member of White Coats for Black Lives, Kristensen-Cabrera co-organized and spoke at the Twin Cities Health Care for Black Lives Protest, which was attended by over 1,000 health care workers. As part of the Medical Education Reform Student Coalition, she is helping to increase community involvement in the medical school, remove race-based medicine, and advocate for an anti-racist curriculum. She also serves on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee and mentors several pre-medical students to increase the number of physicians and physician-scientists from underrepresented backgrounds. Through the Minnesota Medical Association, she is a Suicide Prevention Training Instructor and is engaged in health policy advocacy as a Twin Cities Medical Association Public Health Advocacy Fellow.