Eduardo Fernandez
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Interview Text and Audio
Abstract
Eddy Fernandez is a 3rd-year student at UNC-Chapel Hill who discusses his family’s experience immigrating to Siler City, North Carolina from Texas for employment in the Townsend Chicken Processing Plant. He also discusses his experience growing up in Siler City, a rural area that was primarily Latinx/Latino/Latina. Fernandez explains the way in which the large presence of mental health issues related to migration that he witnessed among his friends growing up has impacted his career choice in the field of public health. Fernandez discusses how he conducted a research project in 2017 on youth mental health as part of the Building Integrated Communities Initiative with the Town of Siler City.R0901_Audio.mp3
Transcript
Rebecca Heine: Hi this is Rebecca here interviewing Eddy Fernandez. Eddy do you consent to this interview?
Eddy Fernandez: Yes.
RH: Cool, let’s get started by you telling me about your year in school and what you’re studying.
EF: Yeah, so I’m a Junior so Class of 2019 and I’m studying Health Policy and Management in the School of Public Health here at UNC.
RH: [00:00:40] Okay, what do you see yourself doing career—wise in the future?
EF: That’s a very good question. I would say actually that I have a fairly decent idea of what I want to do. I eventually want to go either into research or into the health policy world and so kind of focusing on a career that would let me work on addressing health disparities and working on health systems either in the state or federal level. What that looks like exactly? I don’t know. It could be like working for a federal agency or it could be working for a state agency or it could be working at a research place like UNC and putting out more information about where the issues are in health disparities, what’s causing them and things like that and possible ways to address them. That’s kind of a broad overview of what I want to do and that’s probably all I can do honestly— broad.
RH: I gotcha. Have you enjoyed your first year through the Gillings program?
EF: Yeah oh my gosh I love Gillings so much. It’s a bit of a pain sometimes I will admit that. But this past week actually I had six or seven things due this one week actually because my professors decided to jam it all before Easter apparently. So it’s been really good because it’s very focused on health and health care and what’s it’s like here in the U.S. and kind of understanding how does the Federal Government and State Government interact to provide health insurance to people and how that affects their health and what other determinants affect whether or not someone’s living a health life like housing, income, things like that. So it’s been a really interesting year so far and I’ve learned a lot. It’s definitely— I don’t want to say changed my perspective, but it’s influenced how I think about health and how I perceive what is healthy, who starts off as healthy, and kind of thinking well what factors go into that.
RH: [00:02:54] Cool, so I was hoping you would get into describing your family life and your family’s immigration experience.
EF: Yeah, so I am an only child, which is very rare for Latinos, but— let’s see. I’m from Siler City first of all. I have half of my family here in Siler City. By here in Siler City I mean back home. Not like here in Chapel Hill. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. The other half are in Texas, Southern Texas, in a place called Alamo, which is a border city that’s literally, I think twenty minutes from Reynosa, which is in Tamaulipas the state. So, I lived at home with my mom and my stepdad. They— I’m trying to think of where to go from here. So they met each other when I think I was seven or eight so they’ve been together for more than half my life and so I’ve known him for a very long time. And then my other family who’s in North Carolina— it’s one of my aunts her name is Esperanza and she has also lived there her entire life and then my other aunt who lives in— not in Siler City necessarily, but she lives in High Point— they used to live in Siler City and then they moved to Chicago, and then they moved to Miami, and then they moved back to Siler City and then moved back to High Point. So they have been there in North Carolina for a good while, but not too long. And so the way that they immigrated here is really interesting actually. Originally from my family a lot of them are actually citizens so the only people that aren’t citizens are the three oldest in my family which is one of my aunts that lives in Texas, one of my uncles that lives in Texas and then my Mom. All three of them have their residency. So the way that they moved is that originally they lived in Alamo, they lived in McAllen and so they would go back and forth between Texas and Reynosa, which is again like twenty minutes from there and then eventually one of my aunts— the oldest one actually— moved to Siler City for— I actually don’t remember the reason why. But she eventually kind of brought over another aunt and my Mom and then ended up bringing one of my uncles over and then my aunt that had moved there originally decided that she didn’t like living in North Carolina so then she moved back to Texas. And then my uncle moved back to Texas and then another aunt came up to North Carolina so it was just a huge swapping motion and what not, but the reason that they came up was because of work and because of a poultry plant that was in Siler City. It was Townsend. And so they ended up just liking it here and so they decided to stay in North Carolina and Siler City specifically and they just kind of made their life here. My Mom worked for a little bit at a fabrics place and then she switched over to this manufacturing company that’s in Siler City that manufactures different plastics for different parts and then she’s been there for I don’t even know like sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years around there. Definitely like most of my life. Yeah, the poultry plant had closed down a while ago and both of my aunts ended up quitting before they closed. They did work there for a little while and that’s kind of what brought them to Siler City. So it’s just a lot of crossing over and traveling back and forth between these random family ties that you wouldn’t have guessed that they moved here to Siler City for something, but they did.
RH: What does your stepdad do?
EF: Yeah, so my stepdad, he works in a warehouse and he kind of just keeps up that warehouse and he establishes and kind of physically helps build office spaces. And he does that in Raleigh and Durham and for the office spaces it kind of depends on where they have him go it could be in Raleigh, Durham, he could be in Charlotte one day. A lot of traveling for him.
RH: [00:07:50] So I was hoping you would discuss you experience growing up in rural North Carolina and your and your family’s experience being part of the greater Latinx community there.
EF: Yeah, so could you repeat the question again.
RH: So, what was your experience growing up in rural North Carolina and being part of the greater Latinx community there.
EF: So I think in my head I grew up in rural North Carolina, but I don’t think I grew up in a traditional thinking of rural North Carolina because Siler City is like sixty or seventy percent Latinx. And so I think that I did grow up in a very rural area, but not in traditional rural areas like Ramseur, Asheboro or things like that, something with a higher population of white Americans. So I think growing up specifically in Siler City, which is coming next but I’ll talk about the rural part first, is interesting because there is this aspect where it’s kind of fun to poke at rural North Carolina and then being part of rural North Carolina, but you definitely see the kind of— and I definitely have realized it more that I’ve been here and I’ve kind of learned about the rural urban divide. But kind of seeing the lack of opportunities in rural areas and seeing the way that rural communities are set up— not necessarily to fail, but there’s scarce opportunity for people to be like socially mobile. I can’t think of that word now, you know what I’m talking about? Okay. Yeah and so of course me and my friends would always pick at ‘Oh let’s go hang out at the Walmart that’s our mall’ you know whatever and we’d have to drive thirty or forty minutes to get anywhere for fun so me and my friends did a lot of bonfires and we just hung out at the McDonalds and just did random stuff at each other’s houses. But kind of seeing— moving away from Siler City and getting an outside perspective of the short time that I’ve been here it’s been really interesting because I would say that from my high school not that many pursued higher education and I would say that’s because there just wasn’t much to do in Siler City. There just was not much educational opportunities slash ways to stay involved slash ways to also just grow as a person because you’re very much exposed to the same thing every single day. So I mean like— some people enjoy that. They like living in rural areas because it’s their thing and some people it’s like there’s nothing to do here so let’s go do xyz instead. And xyz isn’t necessarily good for the most part. So seeing that and also when you intersect the fact that the majority of the people there are Latinx and then you think about the history of Siler City. The history of Siler City is very interesting when you see the shift in the influx of Latinxes coming in in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s and you see how KKK rallies were hosted in Siler City at one point and the grand dragon was there for a little bit. And it’s funny because I was actually talking to my Mom about this a while ago and— well to give a little bit of context I’m very much involved in the Campus Y and I do a lot of the protesting and things like that and I was talking to my Mom one day and I like straight up asked her, I was like ‘Have you every been to a protest?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah I think I went to one in the early 2000’s that was against the KKK’ and I was like ‘what Mom?’ I asked her so much about it I don’t know and the history of Siler City is really interesting because it wasn’t interracial until this influx has happened and it wasn’t always a racially accepting town and I still would say it’s not. I mean, it’s made a lot of progress for sure, but there’s still a lot of issues in Siler City regarding how they treat Latinxes and so when you intersect that with the issues that a lot of Latinx people face it gets even more stark for the people that live in these rural areas like you have to worry about like okay where am I going to work, does that place allow me to work without papers, what about English and what about accessing services and what happens if I can’t pay my bills and who do I go to for that and things like that. So I think growing up in Siler City and seeing kind of the effects of racial disparities and income disparities and things like that and seeing the rural urban divide while I’ve been here has been a big push on why I’m interested in health disparities because literally everything that a person does is affecting their health and affecting how they live and what not so I think that’s why I’m very interested in health disparities and I think that’s why I pursued health policy and management. And I think that’s why I’m going to pursue research or health policy when I graduate.
RH: So when you said that influx of Latinx coming into Siler City, was that for the poultry plant?
EF: Yeah, so a lot of it was for the poultry plant that was there. It was Townsend and they would hire— I don’t know if they would actually use— I can’t remember the name of the Visa now, but it was the work Visa thing and I don’t know if they actually hired people from that or if they just had a few people that worked there that were Latinx and just kind of brought their families over just by word of mouth, but a lot of that was because of the poultry plant. And out right now there’s – well while it closed down two or three years ago there’s actually another one that’s opening up next yearish so it will be interesting to see how that affects migration patterns again in Siler City.
RH: Interesting. So you mentioned that you think that Siler City has a long way to go in terms of definitely having some issues of discrimination against the Latinx community, so I guess I was hoping you would talk a little more about instances of that or talk a little bit more about why you specifically think that Siler City needs to improve in certain aspects.
EF: I don’t know, I think a lot of it has to do with the historical and what’s happened already and the lack of trust that there is between the Latinx population in Siler city and the greater government in general whether it be local, police force, state government, things like that. But specifically instances— my parents have said so and I’ve kind of felt the same way is whenever police kind of follow and pull over people and they’ll set up checkpoints in very specific areas and areas that they know are home to a large population of the Latino population in Siler City. They’ll put them in strategic areas at strategic times like when people are going to work, coming home from work, when people are dropping their kids at school, so it’s very— it’s the worst. I was going to use a different word, but I probably shouldn’t. But they set them up in these areas— and they’ve been better about not setting up as many checkpoints in the past year or two and I think— I was an intern at the health department last summer and so I was talking a bit to the people there and they were telling me about how the chief had taken a trip to— I can’t remember where in Mexico and just kind of learned about migrants and their experiences and why they come to the US and specifically Siler City because a lot of the migrants are from— I can’t remember if there are a lot from Guadalajara or somewhere else I can’t remember, but just kind of learning what larger forces are bringing them in. I want to say that trip really influenced him in that he hasn’t put check points in as many areas and granted they’re still going to have to put some checkpoints because it’s what they do, but not as heavy in very specific areas and I don’t know it’s been interesting to see how that change has happened and see how my family perceives it because they’ve definitely noticed it too. They remember six or seven years ago that they’d put a checkpoint every other week, like every month at least and it’s been a while since I’ve seen one at least and it’s been a while since they’ve seen one. It’s funny— I think I’ve noticed it more that I’ve started driving like when I was seventeen or eighteen when I actually started driving a lot on my own, but whenever I’d see a checkpoint I’d immediately freeze up and get really nervous and just being like ‘okay why am I nervous, why am I doing this, why am I having this reaction.’ And I think a lot of it stems from the way that I saw my parents perceive checkpoints and the way that my family perceived checkpoints and just kind of attributing that to ‘Okay, something bad is going to happen as soon as I walk in here and have my license read.’
RH: Okay, interesting. So you started talking about this, but how to you believe that your experience has impacted your research and career path. You’ve gotten into this a little bit.
EF: Yes. Like I said, going back to how health isn’t just receiving medical care and it’s not just the process of going to the doctor or getting a check up and what not. It’s important to do that, but that’s only twenty percent of what contributes to health. Everything else is up to the social determinants of health. What’s your housing like? What’s your income like? What kind of access to food do you have? Are they healthy foods? What about access to gyms and things like that. So, understanding okay there are a ton of different things that influence health and I think that’s a big reason why I want to pursue research and policy in that. It’s like we’re not going to— okay so a quick background about this— so the U.S. spends the most on healthcare, but we have the worst health outcomes compared to any other developed country. A lot of that is because we don’t take into account the effects of housing and income and things like that and racial disparities and how that affects people’s social mobility and how that affects health. I think that for me I’m extremely interested in social determinants, but I’m also really interested in mental health and how social determinants affect mental health. So I think that as soon as I heard that Siler city had gotten the BIC grant thing I went up to Hannah and Jessica Lee and said ‘Hey is there anyway that I can help with this. This is in my home town and I think it would be really great to work on this’ and they were like ‘yeah sure that would be great if you could’ and they were very open to me just kind of doing my own project and running with it. So I was like well let me see how mental health is perceived slash what kind of services are available for youth in Siler city and so— what was the question again? I want to make sure that I’m not straying.
RH: [00:21:18] How do you believe that your experience has impacted your research and career path. And then if you want, I mean the next question is discuss your research with me so if you want to start getting into that because I know they’re interrelated then go for it.
EF: Yeah, I’ll go a little bit and do the reasons why.
RH: Okay, perfect.
EF: I think the reasons why are a lot because of what I experienced in high school and seeing a lot of different friends dealing with mental health issues and a lot of them not pursuing help until after they graduated or have yet to pursue any help. I have a couple friends who went through major episodes of depression and major episodes of mania and a lot of people who self—harmed and things like that so I think seeing that and seeing a lot of it really was the reason why I wanted to do the research and kind of understanding okay what kind of resources are available there, what is the gap. What are the reasons this is happening first of all and what can be done to address these things and so for me I want to I guess get to the root of it, but understand what can be done from a policy perspective and what are things that local government can do. And that’s the whole thing about BIC, it’s leveraging local governments to impact local communities and also better integrating these migrant populations into local government and mental health is a part of that so I wanted to explore that in the research I did and I guess I’ll go ahead and start talking about the research itself.
RH: Go for it!
EF: So the way that it worked was that I interviewed school counselors and kind of got their perspective on okay what kind of things are offered within the school system and what kind of things are you seeing most of and how are people coming to you, what are they telling you and things like that. And so at least from what I’ve gathered there’s a good system in place in regards to people who can go to them and get the services that they need, but I think that from the research that I saw and what I gathered not many people are using them. They are being used pretty frequently, but not to the extent to which I feel like they should be. They have these in—school counselors, and then they have in—school therapists, and in school therapy, and then they do referrals and I don’t know they have a lot of different mechanisms from which they can refer people to if they should need do and so I think that’s really good, but – and this is the case for almost all schools really— counseling and support services are severely under—resourced and they don’t have the necessary tools to deal with these pressing issues and so I found out that there are these services that are available and a lot of the people that do come in tend to be kind of really worried about what’s going to happen post high—school amongst the high schoolers— I guess I’ll go through for every grade—ish. And so in high schoolers people are generally worried about what’s going to happen post grad like where am I going to go, what am I going to do, what kind of things are available to me. Because a lot of the people in Siler city, at least it was previously— I actually don’t know about it now because I’ll talk about it with elementary schoolers in a bit, but a lot of them are undocumented so they’re just worried about what kind of things are open to me, what kind of things post grad so they get into this kind of mindset of like there’s nothing out there for me and in some instances it’s validated. There aren’t too many things that are out there for undocumented people. There’s limited resources and it’s a very stark reality and it sucks and that’s one of the reasons why a lot of people go to like that.
And another thing is also just the general— well general’s not the right word, but dealing with self—esteem issues and things that every high schooler goes through and then having that further amplified through racial inequalities and things like that and it’s funny because another part of the research was doing a focus group with youth and I was able to do a little session with them about that and something that they had said that I was not prepared for was the effects of this past election on how they’re treated amongst their white peers and the specific quote that I was thinking of was that there’s no filter anymore. People will just go through the school yelling random things and yell racial slurs and things like that and then just thinking about how that affects them mentally and how that affects their home life and things like that. And just understanding that these people are facing the normal, in quotation marks, strains of teenage life, like self—esteem issues, just understanding where your place is amongst your friend groups, dealing with who am I as a person, but then also having to deal with how do I fit into this specific niche of ethnic populations and how do power relations play into that and so that’s kind of how that was there. And also a lot of people dealing with home issues like domestic violence, interpersonal violence with peers and relationship kind of stuff was also— a lot of people came in for that.
And then in middle schoolers, they have a lot of the same issues as high schoolers, but it’s actually really interesting to see how it’s not as bad. At least from what I gathered from what the data had told me was that it seems like there are a lot more support systems in place at the middle school level than any other level really and that they have a lot more services and availability for if they need to go talk to counselors or if they have issues with things. Which I thought was really interesting given that it’s middle school level. Just from past experience I think that’s where most things start going downhill I guess. And then elementary schoolers, well I think that this for me was the roughest one for me to learn about and understand. So a lot of the things in elementary schools, they actually don’t have as many people who are undocumented, just because the people who are entering these schools were already born in the U.S. because their parents were the ones who kind of brought them over or their parents were the ones that had to deal with in high school they were undocumented and things like that and so it’s interesting because there’s this new generation, that’s going to have to deal with these similar issues, but very different issues. So a lot of them are dealing with the fear of seeing a parent deported and the fear of what’s it like— how do you deal with living in a home where one of the parents is absent whether it’s divorce or they’re in Mexico or a Central American country or South American country and how do you teach kids to deal with this. It was a very touchy subject. It was very interesting to talk about with the counselors and just kind of understanding how they dealt with it and seeing how these elementary schoolers are responding to it. They had— something that really got me was the amount of suicide assessments that they do per year in the elementary schools. I was just like, “Whoa. I don’t even know how to respond to this.” Which I think was something that really got me. Just understanding the people at these schools are facing these kinds of issues. And it’s very much only in one school, which was also interesting because that school is heavily— almost entirely— Latinx whereas the other high school— the other elementary school— is almost entirely— well not almost entirely, it’s a bit more of an even mix between everyone. Between Latinx, White, Black. And so I thought that was also really interesting to see the disparities between the schools and kind of how the different schools responded. At least with the Latinx population, I can’t say anything about their black students or their white students and how they were reacting and how their health was and things like that. But yeah, that’s kind of—
RH: So, in Siler City how many main high schools are there? Is there just one, or?
EF: Yeah, so there’s only one high school in Siler City and there’s three high schools in the county.
RH: Okay
EF: One of them being in Siler City, another one being in Pittsboro, and the other one— I actually don’t know where Chatham Central is, but that’s the other one. And there’s one middle school that’s in Siler City, but then there’s a K-8 that’s in Silk Hope, which also isn’t that far. And usually Jordan Matthews takes in people from Silk Hope and Chatham Middle and there’s also a charter school that’s there that does K-10, which is really weird, but I think they’re expanding it to just be a K-12 school in Siler City, so that’s interesting to say the least. And then there are two elementary schools in Siler City and then of course Silk Hope that does— and a lot of other smaller elementary schools that are in the area, but most of the people that live in Siler City go to either Siler City Elementary or Virginia Cross Elementary or Silk Hope— that’s the other one.
RH: So as part of the research did you talk to counselors at a handful of the schools, or all of the schools, or only particular schools that you selected? Or I guess how did you go about that?
EF: Yeah, so I tried to focus on the schools that had high Latinx populations and then also if they were just in Siler City. So I interviewed people from Siler City, Virginia Cross, Chatham Middle, Jordan Matthews, Silk Hope? I don’t remember if I interviewed Silk Hope. I think I interviewed Silk Hope. No, I did not interview Silk Hope. And then I didn’t interview the charter school because there’s like two, maybe three Latinx people there, so that’s kind of how I based the selection for the interviews.
RH: [00:34:09] So let’s see. What has been a challenging aspect of your research experience? And when did you conduct— is this still ongoing or did you finish it up?
EF: So yeah I finished it up before exams started last semester.
RH: Okay.
EF: So I— what was the question before that?
RH: What was a challenging aspect of your research.
EF: A challenging aspect, yeah. So I think that the general technicalities of it were probably some of the most hardest parts. Like understanding how to conduct an interview and how to make sure that you’re not biased and making sure that you get sound information was one of the hardest parts of it. Just because this was my first time doing research and it was my first time doing research in general and I think that qualitative research is a whole different thing from quantitative research. And I think that quantitative research, while it’s more technical there’s more set guidelines for what to do and I think it’s a lot more easier to learn quantitative because you can analyze data and you can analyze doing that. But picking out themes in qualitative research and understanding how to come off socially, and kind of understanding— okay for example so with the whole suicide assessment thing. I had to be mindful of myself and not gasp or do anything because anything I might do might influence how they respond to the questions and I’m trying to get as unbiased as possible [inaudible]. Because I went to these schools and wanted to bring up certain things, but I knew I couldn’t because of the way it would be perceived by interviewers.
So, I think that part was also very difficult to manage, but I think the two things that probably got me the most were the suicide assessment part of the elementary schoolers and also the thing that was said in the focus group about the post-election kind of unfiltered language just because the counselors didn’t mention that. And I thought it was weird that they didn’t because I think that— and then again this is my biases coming in. I think that life is inherently political and life in any aspect is whatever you can, you can’t be apolitical in anything. And so understanding the way that our national political background is influencing the health of people and influencing the mental health of specific groups, I’m surprised that they didn’t mention it. And then whenever they brought it up in the focus group I was like ‘Ah, there is.’ I knew it was happening and it was affecting their health and whatnot, but I was like ‘Ah, okay talk more about this.’ So, understanding— well I don’t think understanding— but just thinking okay well what can be done from that perspective. There isn’t much that can be done from that perspective. Having teenagers cope with the political climate when not much can be done when he’s going to be there for like two and a half more years. I think those two are probably the hardest parts of reconciling with my research.
RH: So, when you’re conducting research it’s primarily interviews with the counselors and is the only time that you interacted with the kids during the focus groups? So I guess I’d be interested in hearing what the focus groups were like and how you use them to draw conclusions. Did you record them or how does that work?
EF: So the focus group was in conjunction with the main part of BIC. Which their main topics are civic engagement, leadership, and kind of town resources. And so, Jessica Lee asked me to do a little section at the back end and kind of come up with questions for the teenagers. Teenagers— I can’t believe I just said that. But anyway, the focus groups were completely anonymous so they weren’t recorded. There are notes on them, which I actually need to send— no that’s a different focus group just kidding. What was the question again?
RH: How did you use the focus groups?
EF: Yeah, and so I came up with questions from what I gathered from the interviews and okay let’s try and validate these, let’s see what students are perceiving to be the major health issues, mental health issues, and what services they perceive to be available. And so for them, the obvious gap between the counselors and the high school students— and this is just high school students that’s the thing also. So there are definitely gaps in my research that I wish I had time to do, but I didn’t have any.
RH: That’s my last question.
EF: And so, I— Oh shoot, where was I going with this. Words, come back.
RH: High school students, gaps between counselors and high school students.
EF: Okay yeah so the gaps between the high schoolers and counselors. So these services are available and they’re there, but I think that the perception between the systems coming to the counselors is very— they just don’t see them as an option really. And so while they see the counselors as friendly and they see them as a resource, they wouldn’t go to one. They wouldn’t actually go see a counselor if they needed help or they wouldn’t refer friends if they needed help. They knew about the major places to seek therapy, but there’s some kind of barrier that’s between actually going to see those services and so I wish that my research had gone a little bit more into why they weren’t just because it would better inform local policy and things like that, and then also understanding okay well how— and I think this is going to get into the larger BIC area— is understanding the political and understanding how the town of Siler City is going to take into account the new administration and how their perception is going to automatically change even though they have no relation to the presidency. But it will be interesting to see how the town of Siler City kind of manages that and how they try and service either a neutral stance or a counter stance to the presidency because I definitely don’t think that they would support anything involved with policies that are currently being emplaced by the Trump administration. But I definitely could see them taking a neutral stance like okay we don’t agree with this, we don’t disagree with this, but here’s what we’re going to do. Or they could go the complete opposite way and be like we disagree with this and here’s how we’re going to try to make this town more safe for immigrants and foreign—born people.
RH: [00:42:25] So you talked a little bit about this, but my last questions is what specifically would you be interested in looking into in the future, I guess in terms of— I mean this could turn into kind of a career question which we also talked about a little bit, or we could turn it into more of a gaps in research and things you wish you had more time to do kind of question. So if you wanted to reflect on that a little bit more.
EF: I think that for sure at least with my research I really wish I had interviewed more students, and kind of gotten the perspective of students, but that’s really hard to do from an ethical standpoint because these people are underage and you’re dealing with a very sensitive topic so it’s very difficult to get their perspective on things and yeah so I wish I had found a way to get a better perspective of students and how they perceive mental health. And then also— nothing that’s it. I think that’s probably my biggest wish that I had done. And then I guess in terms of career questions and things like that. I don’t know. So when I went into the program I was very much interested in three very specific things: global health, mental health, and access to care. While I still care about those things, I have found that I am interested in a lot more than I originally anticipated. I’m very interested in rural health and seeing how the rural urban divide kind of affects people’s physical, mental, emotional, social health and things like that. And so I think it’d be really interesting to integrate this already really vulnerable population of rural people and further stratify it to well how do ethnic minorities and racial minorities fit into this and what kind of future model of health and delivery model and things like that kind of fit into addressing their needs and their kind of very different needs from rural Americans in general. And then also understanding how we’re currently in this interesting development of a mental health system and understanding okay what can we do to further better the current system that we have in place and how can we make it more accessible and how can we encourage people to go see a therapist regularly and things like that. Because it’s interesting to see how we value physical health a lot more than mental health and how you’re encouraged to go see a primary care doctor at least once a year and you get a yearly checkup but we’re not supposed to go see a psychiatrist every year for a yearly checkup and things like that, so research in that area would be cool.
RH: We’ll that’s it, those are all my questions so thank you so much for being here.
EF: No problem.
RH: Alright.
END OF INTERVIEW
[00:46:04]
Transcribed by Rebecca Heine on April 4, 2018
Eddy Fernandez: Yes.
RH: Cool, let’s get started by you telling me about your year in school and what you’re studying.
EF: Yeah, so I’m a Junior so Class of 2019 and I’m studying Health Policy and Management in the School of Public Health here at UNC.
RH: [00:00:40] Okay, what do you see yourself doing career—wise in the future?
EF: That’s a very good question. I would say actually that I have a fairly decent idea of what I want to do. I eventually want to go either into research or into the health policy world and so kind of focusing on a career that would let me work on addressing health disparities and working on health systems either in the state or federal level. What that looks like exactly? I don’t know. It could be like working for a federal agency or it could be working for a state agency or it could be working at a research place like UNC and putting out more information about where the issues are in health disparities, what’s causing them and things like that and possible ways to address them. That’s kind of a broad overview of what I want to do and that’s probably all I can do honestly— broad.
RH: I gotcha. Have you enjoyed your first year through the Gillings program?
EF: Yeah oh my gosh I love Gillings so much. It’s a bit of a pain sometimes I will admit that. But this past week actually I had six or seven things due this one week actually because my professors decided to jam it all before Easter apparently. So it’s been really good because it’s very focused on health and health care and what’s it’s like here in the U.S. and kind of understanding how does the Federal Government and State Government interact to provide health insurance to people and how that affects their health and what other determinants affect whether or not someone’s living a health life like housing, income, things like that. So it’s been a really interesting year so far and I’ve learned a lot. It’s definitely— I don’t want to say changed my perspective, but it’s influenced how I think about health and how I perceive what is healthy, who starts off as healthy, and kind of thinking well what factors go into that.
RH: [00:02:54] Cool, so I was hoping you would get into describing your family life and your family’s immigration experience.
EF: Yeah, so I am an only child, which is very rare for Latinos, but— let’s see. I’m from Siler City first of all. I have half of my family here in Siler City. By here in Siler City I mean back home. Not like here in Chapel Hill. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. The other half are in Texas, Southern Texas, in a place called Alamo, which is a border city that’s literally, I think twenty minutes from Reynosa, which is in Tamaulipas the state. So, I lived at home with my mom and my stepdad. They— I’m trying to think of where to go from here. So they met each other when I think I was seven or eight so they’ve been together for more than half my life and so I’ve known him for a very long time. And then my other family who’s in North Carolina— it’s one of my aunts her name is Esperanza and she has also lived there her entire life and then my other aunt who lives in— not in Siler City necessarily, but she lives in High Point— they used to live in Siler City and then they moved to Chicago, and then they moved to Miami, and then they moved back to Siler City and then moved back to High Point. So they have been there in North Carolina for a good while, but not too long. And so the way that they immigrated here is really interesting actually. Originally from my family a lot of them are actually citizens so the only people that aren’t citizens are the three oldest in my family which is one of my aunts that lives in Texas, one of my uncles that lives in Texas and then my Mom. All three of them have their residency. So the way that they moved is that originally they lived in Alamo, they lived in McAllen and so they would go back and forth between Texas and Reynosa, which is again like twenty minutes from there and then eventually one of my aunts— the oldest one actually— moved to Siler City for— I actually don’t remember the reason why. But she eventually kind of brought over another aunt and my Mom and then ended up bringing one of my uncles over and then my aunt that had moved there originally decided that she didn’t like living in North Carolina so then she moved back to Texas. And then my uncle moved back to Texas and then another aunt came up to North Carolina so it was just a huge swapping motion and what not, but the reason that they came up was because of work and because of a poultry plant that was in Siler City. It was Townsend. And so they ended up just liking it here and so they decided to stay in North Carolina and Siler City specifically and they just kind of made their life here. My Mom worked for a little bit at a fabrics place and then she switched over to this manufacturing company that’s in Siler City that manufactures different plastics for different parts and then she’s been there for I don’t even know like sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years around there. Definitely like most of my life. Yeah, the poultry plant had closed down a while ago and both of my aunts ended up quitting before they closed. They did work there for a little while and that’s kind of what brought them to Siler City. So it’s just a lot of crossing over and traveling back and forth between these random family ties that you wouldn’t have guessed that they moved here to Siler City for something, but they did.
RH: What does your stepdad do?
EF: Yeah, so my stepdad, he works in a warehouse and he kind of just keeps up that warehouse and he establishes and kind of physically helps build office spaces. And he does that in Raleigh and Durham and for the office spaces it kind of depends on where they have him go it could be in Raleigh, Durham, he could be in Charlotte one day. A lot of traveling for him.
RH: [00:07:50] So I was hoping you would discuss you experience growing up in rural North Carolina and your and your family’s experience being part of the greater Latinx community there.
EF: Yeah, so could you repeat the question again.
RH: So, what was your experience growing up in rural North Carolina and being part of the greater Latinx community there.
EF: So I think in my head I grew up in rural North Carolina, but I don’t think I grew up in a traditional thinking of rural North Carolina because Siler City is like sixty or seventy percent Latinx. And so I think that I did grow up in a very rural area, but not in traditional rural areas like Ramseur, Asheboro or things like that, something with a higher population of white Americans. So I think growing up specifically in Siler City, which is coming next but I’ll talk about the rural part first, is interesting because there is this aspect where it’s kind of fun to poke at rural North Carolina and then being part of rural North Carolina, but you definitely see the kind of— and I definitely have realized it more that I’ve been here and I’ve kind of learned about the rural urban divide. But kind of seeing the lack of opportunities in rural areas and seeing the way that rural communities are set up— not necessarily to fail, but there’s scarce opportunity for people to be like socially mobile. I can’t think of that word now, you know what I’m talking about? Okay. Yeah and so of course me and my friends would always pick at ‘Oh let’s go hang out at the Walmart that’s our mall’ you know whatever and we’d have to drive thirty or forty minutes to get anywhere for fun so me and my friends did a lot of bonfires and we just hung out at the McDonalds and just did random stuff at each other’s houses. But kind of seeing— moving away from Siler City and getting an outside perspective of the short time that I’ve been here it’s been really interesting because I would say that from my high school not that many pursued higher education and I would say that’s because there just wasn’t much to do in Siler City. There just was not much educational opportunities slash ways to stay involved slash ways to also just grow as a person because you’re very much exposed to the same thing every single day. So I mean like— some people enjoy that. They like living in rural areas because it’s their thing and some people it’s like there’s nothing to do here so let’s go do xyz instead. And xyz isn’t necessarily good for the most part. So seeing that and also when you intersect the fact that the majority of the people there are Latinx and then you think about the history of Siler City. The history of Siler City is very interesting when you see the shift in the influx of Latinxes coming in in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s and you see how KKK rallies were hosted in Siler City at one point and the grand dragon was there for a little bit. And it’s funny because I was actually talking to my Mom about this a while ago and— well to give a little bit of context I’m very much involved in the Campus Y and I do a lot of the protesting and things like that and I was talking to my Mom one day and I like straight up asked her, I was like ‘Have you every been to a protest?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah I think I went to one in the early 2000’s that was against the KKK’ and I was like ‘what Mom?’ I asked her so much about it I don’t know and the history of Siler City is really interesting because it wasn’t interracial until this influx has happened and it wasn’t always a racially accepting town and I still would say it’s not. I mean, it’s made a lot of progress for sure, but there’s still a lot of issues in Siler City regarding how they treat Latinxes and so when you intersect that with the issues that a lot of Latinx people face it gets even more stark for the people that live in these rural areas like you have to worry about like okay where am I going to work, does that place allow me to work without papers, what about English and what about accessing services and what happens if I can’t pay my bills and who do I go to for that and things like that. So I think growing up in Siler City and seeing kind of the effects of racial disparities and income disparities and things like that and seeing the rural urban divide while I’ve been here has been a big push on why I’m interested in health disparities because literally everything that a person does is affecting their health and affecting how they live and what not so I think that’s why I’m very interested in health disparities and I think that’s why I pursued health policy and management. And I think that’s why I’m going to pursue research or health policy when I graduate.
RH: So when you said that influx of Latinx coming into Siler City, was that for the poultry plant?
EF: Yeah, so a lot of it was for the poultry plant that was there. It was Townsend and they would hire— I don’t know if they would actually use— I can’t remember the name of the Visa now, but it was the work Visa thing and I don’t know if they actually hired people from that or if they just had a few people that worked there that were Latinx and just kind of brought their families over just by word of mouth, but a lot of that was because of the poultry plant. And out right now there’s – well while it closed down two or three years ago there’s actually another one that’s opening up next yearish so it will be interesting to see how that affects migration patterns again in Siler City.
RH: Interesting. So you mentioned that you think that Siler City has a long way to go in terms of definitely having some issues of discrimination against the Latinx community, so I guess I was hoping you would talk a little more about instances of that or talk a little bit more about why you specifically think that Siler City needs to improve in certain aspects.
EF: I don’t know, I think a lot of it has to do with the historical and what’s happened already and the lack of trust that there is between the Latinx population in Siler city and the greater government in general whether it be local, police force, state government, things like that. But specifically instances— my parents have said so and I’ve kind of felt the same way is whenever police kind of follow and pull over people and they’ll set up checkpoints in very specific areas and areas that they know are home to a large population of the Latino population in Siler City. They’ll put them in strategic areas at strategic times like when people are going to work, coming home from work, when people are dropping their kids at school, so it’s very— it’s the worst. I was going to use a different word, but I probably shouldn’t. But they set them up in these areas— and they’ve been better about not setting up as many checkpoints in the past year or two and I think— I was an intern at the health department last summer and so I was talking a bit to the people there and they were telling me about how the chief had taken a trip to— I can’t remember where in Mexico and just kind of learned about migrants and their experiences and why they come to the US and specifically Siler City because a lot of the migrants are from— I can’t remember if there are a lot from Guadalajara or somewhere else I can’t remember, but just kind of learning what larger forces are bringing them in. I want to say that trip really influenced him in that he hasn’t put check points in as many areas and granted they’re still going to have to put some checkpoints because it’s what they do, but not as heavy in very specific areas and I don’t know it’s been interesting to see how that change has happened and see how my family perceives it because they’ve definitely noticed it too. They remember six or seven years ago that they’d put a checkpoint every other week, like every month at least and it’s been a while since I’ve seen one at least and it’s been a while since they’ve seen one. It’s funny— I think I’ve noticed it more that I’ve started driving like when I was seventeen or eighteen when I actually started driving a lot on my own, but whenever I’d see a checkpoint I’d immediately freeze up and get really nervous and just being like ‘okay why am I nervous, why am I doing this, why am I having this reaction.’ And I think a lot of it stems from the way that I saw my parents perceive checkpoints and the way that my family perceived checkpoints and just kind of attributing that to ‘Okay, something bad is going to happen as soon as I walk in here and have my license read.’
RH: Okay, interesting. So you started talking about this, but how to you believe that your experience has impacted your research and career path. You’ve gotten into this a little bit.
EF: Yes. Like I said, going back to how health isn’t just receiving medical care and it’s not just the process of going to the doctor or getting a check up and what not. It’s important to do that, but that’s only twenty percent of what contributes to health. Everything else is up to the social determinants of health. What’s your housing like? What’s your income like? What kind of access to food do you have? Are they healthy foods? What about access to gyms and things like that. So, understanding okay there are a ton of different things that influence health and I think that’s a big reason why I want to pursue research and policy in that. It’s like we’re not going to— okay so a quick background about this— so the U.S. spends the most on healthcare, but we have the worst health outcomes compared to any other developed country. A lot of that is because we don’t take into account the effects of housing and income and things like that and racial disparities and how that affects people’s social mobility and how that affects health. I think that for me I’m extremely interested in social determinants, but I’m also really interested in mental health and how social determinants affect mental health. So I think that as soon as I heard that Siler city had gotten the BIC grant thing I went up to Hannah and Jessica Lee and said ‘Hey is there anyway that I can help with this. This is in my home town and I think it would be really great to work on this’ and they were like ‘yeah sure that would be great if you could’ and they were very open to me just kind of doing my own project and running with it. So I was like well let me see how mental health is perceived slash what kind of services are available for youth in Siler city and so— what was the question again? I want to make sure that I’m not straying.
RH: [00:21:18] How do you believe that your experience has impacted your research and career path. And then if you want, I mean the next question is discuss your research with me so if you want to start getting into that because I know they’re interrelated then go for it.
EF: Yeah, I’ll go a little bit and do the reasons why.
RH: Okay, perfect.
EF: I think the reasons why are a lot because of what I experienced in high school and seeing a lot of different friends dealing with mental health issues and a lot of them not pursuing help until after they graduated or have yet to pursue any help. I have a couple friends who went through major episodes of depression and major episodes of mania and a lot of people who self—harmed and things like that so I think seeing that and seeing a lot of it really was the reason why I wanted to do the research and kind of understanding okay what kind of resources are available there, what is the gap. What are the reasons this is happening first of all and what can be done to address these things and so for me I want to I guess get to the root of it, but understand what can be done from a policy perspective and what are things that local government can do. And that’s the whole thing about BIC, it’s leveraging local governments to impact local communities and also better integrating these migrant populations into local government and mental health is a part of that so I wanted to explore that in the research I did and I guess I’ll go ahead and start talking about the research itself.
RH: Go for it!
EF: So the way that it worked was that I interviewed school counselors and kind of got their perspective on okay what kind of things are offered within the school system and what kind of things are you seeing most of and how are people coming to you, what are they telling you and things like that. And so at least from what I’ve gathered there’s a good system in place in regards to people who can go to them and get the services that they need, but I think that from the research that I saw and what I gathered not many people are using them. They are being used pretty frequently, but not to the extent to which I feel like they should be. They have these in—school counselors, and then they have in—school therapists, and in school therapy, and then they do referrals and I don’t know they have a lot of different mechanisms from which they can refer people to if they should need do and so I think that’s really good, but – and this is the case for almost all schools really— counseling and support services are severely under—resourced and they don’t have the necessary tools to deal with these pressing issues and so I found out that there are these services that are available and a lot of the people that do come in tend to be kind of really worried about what’s going to happen post high—school amongst the high schoolers— I guess I’ll go through for every grade—ish. And so in high schoolers people are generally worried about what’s going to happen post grad like where am I going to go, what am I going to do, what kind of things are available to me. Because a lot of the people in Siler city, at least it was previously— I actually don’t know about it now because I’ll talk about it with elementary schoolers in a bit, but a lot of them are undocumented so they’re just worried about what kind of things are open to me, what kind of things post grad so they get into this kind of mindset of like there’s nothing out there for me and in some instances it’s validated. There aren’t too many things that are out there for undocumented people. There’s limited resources and it’s a very stark reality and it sucks and that’s one of the reasons why a lot of people go to like that.
And another thing is also just the general— well general’s not the right word, but dealing with self—esteem issues and things that every high schooler goes through and then having that further amplified through racial inequalities and things like that and it’s funny because another part of the research was doing a focus group with youth and I was able to do a little session with them about that and something that they had said that I was not prepared for was the effects of this past election on how they’re treated amongst their white peers and the specific quote that I was thinking of was that there’s no filter anymore. People will just go through the school yelling random things and yell racial slurs and things like that and then just thinking about how that affects them mentally and how that affects their home life and things like that. And just understanding that these people are facing the normal, in quotation marks, strains of teenage life, like self—esteem issues, just understanding where your place is amongst your friend groups, dealing with who am I as a person, but then also having to deal with how do I fit into this specific niche of ethnic populations and how do power relations play into that and so that’s kind of how that was there. And also a lot of people dealing with home issues like domestic violence, interpersonal violence with peers and relationship kind of stuff was also— a lot of people came in for that.
And then in middle schoolers, they have a lot of the same issues as high schoolers, but it’s actually really interesting to see how it’s not as bad. At least from what I gathered from what the data had told me was that it seems like there are a lot more support systems in place at the middle school level than any other level really and that they have a lot more services and availability for if they need to go talk to counselors or if they have issues with things. Which I thought was really interesting given that it’s middle school level. Just from past experience I think that’s where most things start going downhill I guess. And then elementary schoolers, well I think that this for me was the roughest one for me to learn about and understand. So a lot of the things in elementary schools, they actually don’t have as many people who are undocumented, just because the people who are entering these schools were already born in the U.S. because their parents were the ones who kind of brought them over or their parents were the ones that had to deal with in high school they were undocumented and things like that and so it’s interesting because there’s this new generation, that’s going to have to deal with these similar issues, but very different issues. So a lot of them are dealing with the fear of seeing a parent deported and the fear of what’s it like— how do you deal with living in a home where one of the parents is absent whether it’s divorce or they’re in Mexico or a Central American country or South American country and how do you teach kids to deal with this. It was a very touchy subject. It was very interesting to talk about with the counselors and just kind of understanding how they dealt with it and seeing how these elementary schoolers are responding to it. They had— something that really got me was the amount of suicide assessments that they do per year in the elementary schools. I was just like, “Whoa. I don’t even know how to respond to this.” Which I think was something that really got me. Just understanding the people at these schools are facing these kinds of issues. And it’s very much only in one school, which was also interesting because that school is heavily— almost entirely— Latinx whereas the other high school— the other elementary school— is almost entirely— well not almost entirely, it’s a bit more of an even mix between everyone. Between Latinx, White, Black. And so I thought that was also really interesting to see the disparities between the schools and kind of how the different schools responded. At least with the Latinx population, I can’t say anything about their black students or their white students and how they were reacting and how their health was and things like that. But yeah, that’s kind of—
RH: So, in Siler City how many main high schools are there? Is there just one, or?
EF: Yeah, so there’s only one high school in Siler City and there’s three high schools in the county.
RH: Okay
EF: One of them being in Siler City, another one being in Pittsboro, and the other one— I actually don’t know where Chatham Central is, but that’s the other one. And there’s one middle school that’s in Siler City, but then there’s a K-8 that’s in Silk Hope, which also isn’t that far. And usually Jordan Matthews takes in people from Silk Hope and Chatham Middle and there’s also a charter school that’s there that does K-10, which is really weird, but I think they’re expanding it to just be a K-12 school in Siler City, so that’s interesting to say the least. And then there are two elementary schools in Siler City and then of course Silk Hope that does— and a lot of other smaller elementary schools that are in the area, but most of the people that live in Siler City go to either Siler City Elementary or Virginia Cross Elementary or Silk Hope— that’s the other one.
RH: So as part of the research did you talk to counselors at a handful of the schools, or all of the schools, or only particular schools that you selected? Or I guess how did you go about that?
EF: Yeah, so I tried to focus on the schools that had high Latinx populations and then also if they were just in Siler City. So I interviewed people from Siler City, Virginia Cross, Chatham Middle, Jordan Matthews, Silk Hope? I don’t remember if I interviewed Silk Hope. I think I interviewed Silk Hope. No, I did not interview Silk Hope. And then I didn’t interview the charter school because there’s like two, maybe three Latinx people there, so that’s kind of how I based the selection for the interviews.
RH: [00:34:09] So let’s see. What has been a challenging aspect of your research experience? And when did you conduct— is this still ongoing or did you finish it up?
EF: So yeah I finished it up before exams started last semester.
RH: Okay.
EF: So I— what was the question before that?
RH: What was a challenging aspect of your research.
EF: A challenging aspect, yeah. So I think that the general technicalities of it were probably some of the most hardest parts. Like understanding how to conduct an interview and how to make sure that you’re not biased and making sure that you get sound information was one of the hardest parts of it. Just because this was my first time doing research and it was my first time doing research in general and I think that qualitative research is a whole different thing from quantitative research. And I think that quantitative research, while it’s more technical there’s more set guidelines for what to do and I think it’s a lot more easier to learn quantitative because you can analyze data and you can analyze doing that. But picking out themes in qualitative research and understanding how to come off socially, and kind of understanding— okay for example so with the whole suicide assessment thing. I had to be mindful of myself and not gasp or do anything because anything I might do might influence how they respond to the questions and I’m trying to get as unbiased as possible [inaudible]. Because I went to these schools and wanted to bring up certain things, but I knew I couldn’t because of the way it would be perceived by interviewers.
So, I think that part was also very difficult to manage, but I think the two things that probably got me the most were the suicide assessment part of the elementary schoolers and also the thing that was said in the focus group about the post-election kind of unfiltered language just because the counselors didn’t mention that. And I thought it was weird that they didn’t because I think that— and then again this is my biases coming in. I think that life is inherently political and life in any aspect is whatever you can, you can’t be apolitical in anything. And so understanding the way that our national political background is influencing the health of people and influencing the mental health of specific groups, I’m surprised that they didn’t mention it. And then whenever they brought it up in the focus group I was like ‘Ah, there is.’ I knew it was happening and it was affecting their health and whatnot, but I was like ‘Ah, okay talk more about this.’ So, understanding— well I don’t think understanding— but just thinking okay well what can be done from that perspective. There isn’t much that can be done from that perspective. Having teenagers cope with the political climate when not much can be done when he’s going to be there for like two and a half more years. I think those two are probably the hardest parts of reconciling with my research.
RH: So, when you’re conducting research it’s primarily interviews with the counselors and is the only time that you interacted with the kids during the focus groups? So I guess I’d be interested in hearing what the focus groups were like and how you use them to draw conclusions. Did you record them or how does that work?
EF: So the focus group was in conjunction with the main part of BIC. Which their main topics are civic engagement, leadership, and kind of town resources. And so, Jessica Lee asked me to do a little section at the back end and kind of come up with questions for the teenagers. Teenagers— I can’t believe I just said that. But anyway, the focus groups were completely anonymous so they weren’t recorded. There are notes on them, which I actually need to send— no that’s a different focus group just kidding. What was the question again?
RH: How did you use the focus groups?
EF: Yeah, and so I came up with questions from what I gathered from the interviews and okay let’s try and validate these, let’s see what students are perceiving to be the major health issues, mental health issues, and what services they perceive to be available. And so for them, the obvious gap between the counselors and the high school students— and this is just high school students that’s the thing also. So there are definitely gaps in my research that I wish I had time to do, but I didn’t have any.
RH: That’s my last question.
EF: And so, I— Oh shoot, where was I going with this. Words, come back.
RH: High school students, gaps between counselors and high school students.
EF: Okay yeah so the gaps between the high schoolers and counselors. So these services are available and they’re there, but I think that the perception between the systems coming to the counselors is very— they just don’t see them as an option really. And so while they see the counselors as friendly and they see them as a resource, they wouldn’t go to one. They wouldn’t actually go see a counselor if they needed help or they wouldn’t refer friends if they needed help. They knew about the major places to seek therapy, but there’s some kind of barrier that’s between actually going to see those services and so I wish that my research had gone a little bit more into why they weren’t just because it would better inform local policy and things like that, and then also understanding okay well how— and I think this is going to get into the larger BIC area— is understanding the political and understanding how the town of Siler City is going to take into account the new administration and how their perception is going to automatically change even though they have no relation to the presidency. But it will be interesting to see how the town of Siler City kind of manages that and how they try and service either a neutral stance or a counter stance to the presidency because I definitely don’t think that they would support anything involved with policies that are currently being emplaced by the Trump administration. But I definitely could see them taking a neutral stance like okay we don’t agree with this, we don’t disagree with this, but here’s what we’re going to do. Or they could go the complete opposite way and be like we disagree with this and here’s how we’re going to try to make this town more safe for immigrants and foreign—born people.
RH: [00:42:25] So you talked a little bit about this, but my last questions is what specifically would you be interested in looking into in the future, I guess in terms of— I mean this could turn into kind of a career question which we also talked about a little bit, or we could turn it into more of a gaps in research and things you wish you had more time to do kind of question. So if you wanted to reflect on that a little bit more.
EF: I think that for sure at least with my research I really wish I had interviewed more students, and kind of gotten the perspective of students, but that’s really hard to do from an ethical standpoint because these people are underage and you’re dealing with a very sensitive topic so it’s very difficult to get their perspective on things and yeah so I wish I had found a way to get a better perspective of students and how they perceive mental health. And then also— nothing that’s it. I think that’s probably my biggest wish that I had done. And then I guess in terms of career questions and things like that. I don’t know. So when I went into the program I was very much interested in three very specific things: global health, mental health, and access to care. While I still care about those things, I have found that I am interested in a lot more than I originally anticipated. I’m very interested in rural health and seeing how the rural urban divide kind of affects people’s physical, mental, emotional, social health and things like that. And so I think it’d be really interesting to integrate this already really vulnerable population of rural people and further stratify it to well how do ethnic minorities and racial minorities fit into this and what kind of future model of health and delivery model and things like that kind of fit into addressing their needs and their kind of very different needs from rural Americans in general. And then also understanding how we’re currently in this interesting development of a mental health system and understanding okay what can we do to further better the current system that we have in place and how can we make it more accessible and how can we encourage people to go see a therapist regularly and things like that. Because it’s interesting to see how we value physical health a lot more than mental health and how you’re encouraged to go see a primary care doctor at least once a year and you get a yearly checkup but we’re not supposed to go see a psychiatrist every year for a yearly checkup and things like that, so research in that area would be cool.
RH: We’ll that’s it, those are all my questions so thank you so much for being here.
EF: No problem.
RH: Alright.
END OF INTERVIEW
[00:46:04]
Transcribed by Rebecca Heine on April 4, 2018
