It wasn’t the only hardship to hit amid Moore’s pursuit of one Briganix 90mg (Brigatinib) of the most significant projects of her academic life, taken in between her third and fourth years of medical school at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM). Over 10 months last year, she worked out of Hospital Manuel Gea González in Mexico City, conducting research on a number of skin conditions including melasma, eczema, and vitiligo to determine how the hospital treated their dermatology outpatients and tailored treatments for skin of color.
Moore’s experience is a perfect example of how PSOM students are regularly pushed to think beyond their sphere of immediate experience. They are encouraged to think beyond the bedside, to see not only the patients in the clinic, but those who can’t afford a doctor’s visit. They are called to fill gaps in access for underserved and under-represented people and communities, across the country and the world.
This often involves creative problem solving, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and a determination to channel their abilities to their fullest use.
Hardship on the Road to Advanced Levels of Scholarship
Moore, from Bridgetown, Barbados and Sewickley, Pennsylvania, began her fourth year of medical school at Penn this fall, continuing a remarkably accomplished educational career. She came to Penn a summa cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College with a degree in Hispanic Studies and Romance Languages & Literatures.
Over the course of her educational career, she has worked on medical projects in Latin America and Africa while also growing as an activist, musician, and artist. She has carried out entrepreneurship work, through the PennHealthX program, on SANIPACK, a portable, battery powered N95 mask sterilizer that won recognition by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s COVID for Africa Innovation Competition and was selected for investment by the Clinton Foundation.
When it came to her Fulbright research, the project was actually the easy part. Initially, she planned to work closely with Dr. Roberto Estrada-Castañón, a dermatologist in private practice who dedicated his weekends to community dermatology outreach in Guerrero, Mexico and other rural communities. Together, they crafted a Fulbright grant proposal with this objective in mind.
Moore’s father’s sudden death changed her perspective on the work. She dedicates her medical career and Fulbright to his larger-than-life memory.
“The Fulbright Scholarship gave me the ability to take a bit of a break from my med school studies, and to process my grief while focusing on work I feel really passionate about,” she explained. “I think part of it was also trying not to throw away all the opportunities that I’d worked so hard to get, and that my father had been so supportive toward.”
With grit and resolve, she continued and was granted funding for her project.
However, while preparing for her trip, Moore received word from the U.S. government advising her to stay in Mexico City instead of pursuing her original plan of working full-time in Guerrero, in the interest of personal safety. This unexpected turn required her to reconsider much of her project’s initial focus and find a new project sponsor.
And then Estrada passed away from Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Already on a path plagued with hardships, Moore was suddenly challenged to face a drastic shift in her plans without her mentor and research partner.