by Alex Collins
Hispanic Heritage Month holds a special place in my heart. As the daughter of a strong, independent Mexican mother, I was exposed to a beautiful culture, a great work ethic and an emphasis on sticking to my values. My mother, like many other Hispanic mothers, not only showed me unconditional love but also encouraged me to never let someone tell me what I can and can’t do. Hispanic Heritage Month is a month of celebration of the accomplishments, innovations, and culture of all Hispanic communities.
In honor of this, I would like to highlight a few of the many strong Hispanics who made a difference in medicine. To begin with, Carlos Juan Finlay from Cuba played a significant role in the Yellow Fever (Weiner, 2020). Although he noticed an increase in the mosquito population during the Yellow Fever epidemic in 1881, no one believed him. Until 1898, when the United States Army’s troops were dying more from infectious diseases than combat during the Spanish-American War. Finlay shared strategies for mosquito control, which resulted in a significant reduction in outbreaks.
Ildaura Murillo-Rohde was a well-educated and accomplished Hispanic woman from Panama (Weiner, 2020). She wrote about many serious topics, advocated for nurses, and was a nurse herself. One of her many accomplishments was creating the National Association of Hispanic Nurses (NAHN) in 1975. She created this organization because she saw a shortage of Hispanic nurses. When she would go to work in Washington with the federal government to review research and education grants, she was the only Hispanic nurse there.
Helen Rodriguez Trías from Puerto Rico was an important doctor who co-founded the Campaign to End Sterilization Abuse and helped make strict federal guidelines for consent for medical procedures (Rizzo, 2021). What led her to co-found the campaign was her work during the 1970s, where she worked with women in the United States who the government had coerced to go through sterilization. Minority and disabled women were the primary victims of this atrocious act. Trías became the first Latina president of the American Public Health Association in 1993.
These are only a few of the many important Hispanic people who have contributed to medicine. Despire the barriers they faced; they did not let anyone tell them what they coould and couldn’t do. They persevered and contributed significantly to different aspects of medicine.
Sí, se puede.
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