By Leyla Arcasoy

This summer, I’m interning at Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Immigrant Health & Cancer Disparities Service.  The work that we do at the IHCD revolves around limiting and overcoming the disparities that vulnerable populations face when it comes to access to healthcare, more specifically, cancer care.

So far, I have two major roles at my internship: I spend my mornings distributing food at our pantries to cancer patients, and I spend my afternoons doing research on the services provided for cancer patients throughout the city and nationwide.  At pantry, we provide food that often supplements the patients’ diets, like fresh produce, beans, grains, and fruit.  The patients are always cheery and greet us with smiles on their faces.  It’s been a really great and valuable way to participate in a tangible form of service in my internship this summer.

At the office, I spend the majority of my time doing research on the different services available for cancer patients, like financial assistance, transportation services, and quality of life assistance.  Every week, a seminar is held for the interns, where either one of the staff members or a guest speaker gives a lecture about one or some of the barriers to cancer care experienced by the vulnerable populations that we serve.

A great perk: I’m one of the youngest interns at the office, in fact, the youngest, and it’s been an interesting part of the experience.  I get a lot of advice from the staff members and the other interns, the majority of which are either upper classmen, graduate students, or medical students ranging from navigating the intern experience to getting through my undergraduate career and figuring out goals for the future.

(Some pictures from my commute in the city!)