By Rachael Warecki ’08
Natalia Alameda ’25At Scripps, students are empowered to venture beyond the “Claremont Bubble.” Whether studying or interning abroad, these global engagement experiences often present watershed moments where students convert classroom knowledge into actionable change for good. Fueled by confidence, courage, and hope, Natalia Alameda ’25, Anabhra Singh ’25, and Claire Campbell ’24 share how they’re helping build healthy communities around the world.
Natalia Alameda ’25
Natalia Alameda ’25, who hails from Progreso, Texas, arrived at Scripps with an interest in medicine, but her passion for public health soon emerged.
She credits two courses taught by Pitzer College Professor of Sociology Alicia Bonaparte with expanding her idea of the discipline—now, Alameda is majoring in human biology with a concentration in cross-cultural health and healing.
“These classes broadened my perspective on health, allowing me to consider social determinants and external influences alongside scientific processes,” Alameda explains. “All of these factors play a critical role in health outcomes.”
It was the desire to further explore this holistic lens that led Alameda to study abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina, through the School for International Training (SIT) Public Health in Urban Environments program. The program was divided into two distinct phases: the first, a cycle of classes and academic excursions outside the classroom, and the second, an internship at a medical facility. The program was also conducted entirely in Spanish—a particularly meaningful aspect for Alameda.
“As someone passionate about working with Spanish speaking communities, I found immense value in learning about public health in Spanish,” she says. “Health disparities impact communities everywhere and being able to engage in this work bilingually not only deepened my understanding but also reinforced my commitment to serving diverse populations.”
The program’s emphasis on community-based learning allowed Alameda to expand her knowledge of the region and its people. Although her cohort was primarily based in Buenos Aires, they frequently visited different provinces throughout Argentina during the program’s first phase. These excursions highlighted not only the differences between urban and rural health care across the country, but also the quality disparities between the nation’s three main health care systems: public, private, and pre-paid.
In some ways, Alameda learned, the health issues people encounter in urban Argentina are similar to those faced in the United States.
“Doctors I interviewed spoke about long working hours, low pay, and, at times, unsanitary conditions,” Alameda says. “However, particularly for underserved communities in the US, the added barrier of high medical costs makes access to care even more difficult.”
Although Argentina’s public health policy ensures free health care for all, public hospitals and clinics often grapple with underfunding and long patient wait times compared to medical facilities in the private sector. Similarly, rural areas’ unique obstacles are exacerbated by a lack of resources. In Mendoza, a wine-country province bordering Chile, Alameda visited a center staffed by community members without formal medical certification. In Tucumán, a region in the northeast, residents couldn’t access the mosquito repellant needed to fend off an outbreak of Dengue fever. To help, Alameda’s cohort partnered with the local Red Cross to lead a workshop that taught elementary schoolers how to make homemade repellent.
“We were challenged to think critically about how health disparities manifest in different environments and how localized solutions emerge in response,” says Alameda.
For the internship part of the program, Alameda partnered with Hospital Simplemente Evita, a public hospital in Buenos Aires. During her placement, Alameda shadowed neonatology, gynecology, and obstetrics professionals and analyzed the primary causes of premature births within the hospital’s patient population. She was captivated by the respect and care given to Argentinian women before, during, and after labor.
This interest not only sparked Alameda’s senior thesis on obstetric violence—a form of gender-based mistreatment of women that occurs during pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum—it also honed her career plans to work centered on improving perinatal support. After graduation, she aims to pursue clinical research in maternal and child health.
“This program played a pivotal role in shaping my career goals,” Alameda says. “By allowing me to learn from Argentina’s health care system, I’ve been able to identify specific areas where I can make a meaningful impact.”
Anabhra Singh ’25Anabhra Singh ’25
Growing up in Bangalore, India, Anabhra Singh ’25’s upbringing didn’t necessarily look the same as her US classmates’ at Scripps—but she found a sense of community and purpose and a deepening love for medicine.
Her classes at The Claremont Colleges—including courses taught by Associate Professor of History Corey Tazzara and Professors of Biology Emily Wiley and Patrick Ferree—triggered a revelation: she could major in both history and biology without sacrificing research opportunities in health care.
“I feel incredibly fortunate to be a scientist with a strong humanities background—an interdisciplinary foundation that has shaped my perspective,” Singh says. “The chance to create tangible change in people’s lives and improve access to effective health care ultimately drew me to this field.”
Singh has spent her college summers interning in the US, where she served as a research assistant for Tazzara, contributing to the publication of his book, Filippo Sassetti on Trade, Institutions, and Empire (2023), and as a research fellow in Ferree’s lab, where her work has led to a second-author publication and an upcoming conference presentation. Her work off campus is just as impressive. Last year, she led a team of interns at SDNeurosurgery in La Jolla, California, where she came face to face with the realities of patient care and accumulated hundreds of hours of hands-on clinical experience.
Singh’s interdisciplinary academic lens, her role as the executive vice president of Scripps Associated Students (SAS), and her internships have all informed her drive to improve public health. Her experiences at Scripps, both in and out of the classroom, have helped her de-center the individual biases and power structures that contribute to inaccurate narratives around contentious issues, such as immigration, religion, and reproductive justice. Devoted to uplifting other international students, she’s also emerged as a leader with Scripps International Community, rising from mentee to co-president to help peers find their paths.
“At the heart of global issues are individual people and their stories,” Singh explains. “Building meaningful connections with fellow students and patients has reinforced my belief that understanding personal narratives is key to addressing broader systemic challenges.”
Having graduated this spring, Singh is advancing her interest in health care as she pursues either an MD or a joint MD-PhD graduate degree.
“My international background and leadership with SAS have shaped my commitment to making medicine and research more inclusive and cross-cultural,” Singh says. “I hope to contribute to a future where medical advancements are driven by meaningful interactions, real stories, and diverse perspectives, ultimately serving a broader global community.”
Claire Campbell ’24Claire Campbell ’24
Last summer, Claire Campbell ’24 embarked on an extraordinary journey: traveling to Uganda to help build Musizi University, the nation’s first private liberal arts college.
With support from Takako Mino CMC ’11, who co-founded the university, Campbell spent three months designing interdisciplinary public health curricula in healthcare analytics—one of three new degree programs that will launch at Musizi this fall.
“The project allowed me to take inspiration from all of my favorite Scripps courses and build the kind of class I would absolutely love to take,” Campbell says.
Originally from Bellingham, Washington, Campbell came to Scripps “deeply curious, but without a clear direction.” Her professors quickly kindled her academic interests in two seemingly disparate disciplines, leading Campbell to weave her heart for community health with a dual major: biology and the Humanities Major in Interdisciplinary Studies in Culture (HMSC).
“Learning through the HMSC gave me that interdisciplinary lens to examine how sociopolitical systems of power embed in our communities on both the micro and macro scale,” Campbell explains. “Connecting humanities with the scientific realities of biology grounds my work and how I engage with the world.”
Campbell first learned about the Musizi University internship from a friend at Claremont McKenna College. She was drawn to the women-led team, the growth opportunities that came with working abroad, and the chance to build her own community health related projects.
In addition to designing curricula, Campbell collaborated with Ugandan researchers, doctors, and the Ministry of Health to develop the Musizi Health Data Institute (MHDI) in response to Ugandan health data needs.
“Health data is crucial for informed decision-making at all levels of care, from the individual patient to clinic systems to community-wide research,” Campbell explains, noting that most clinics in Uganda still rely on paper recordkeeping. “In rural areas where resources are slim, manual screening of paper records is a labor-intensive task that takes away from provider time with patients.”
Reflecting on her time in Uganda, Campbell is quick to highlight the importance of situating public health responses within a collective, interconnected mindset. “The dominant narratives built by medical institutions treat public health issues as something to be solved in isolation,” she says. “This is a reductionist perspective that fails to address and reckon with how relationships of power manifest physically within the body.”
Now back in the US, Campbell stays in touch with her colleagues at Musizi while applying for graduate programs. She’s prioritizing the support of local community resources where she currently lives in rural Idaho.
“The pursuit of collective health, rooted in care, dignity, and sovereignty, must go deeper than physical symptoms,” Campbell says. “My passion lies in building and supporting healthy communities.”
This story originally appeared in the spring 2025 Scripps magazine issue.Â