Bhumika Patel, a 2024 Pisacano Scholar, is a 4^th-year medical student at Western University of Health Sciences. She graduated from her home state’s University of Vermont (UVM) with a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology and Nutrition & Food Science. Nestled in the green mountains, she grew up in an underserved town, playing in rivers and running on trails. Though her family was the only one of color, she has a rich perspective on community support and having pride in your story.

At UVM, Bhumika kept busy by teaching yoga and meditation, spearheading student government projects, and exploring Vermont’s outdoor playground. However, she found ways to incorporate her true passion into any role she found herself in – filling in gaps in her community with lasting solutions. Creating a multidisciplinary campus-wide annual mental health event and offering free yoga classes were a few of the ways that Bhumika addressed the gaps in mental health support that the student body had voiced as a concern. Bringing farm-fresh food to the dining halls and conducting crucial research in food insecurity paved the way for greater access to nutritious food for her peers.

After graduating in 2018, Bhumika found that her underlying passion is creating positive change through medicine, and she worked as a medical assistant at a federally qualified health center (FQHC) during the three years between her undergraduate education and medical school matriculation. Her work at an FQHC nurtured her passion for learning others’ stories in order to better help them and commit herself to daily grassroots activities that lead to sustained wellness for her patients. From transportation to local community food resources, Bhumika took note of what her patients lacked to support their health and ensured they received the help they needed. This is why Bhumika knew she wanted to be a family physician for underserved populations before she started medical school, ultimately choosing an osteopathic medical school to gain another skill set that she could bring to her future patients.

While in medical school, Bhumika continued to hone her skills in finding gaps in her community and creating multiple ways to address them. Noticing a rapid uptick of substance use disorders coupled with a lag in medical education nationwide, Bhumika founded the Harm Reduction and Addiction Medicine Interest Group, creating opportunities to expose her peers to substance use disorder education. As part of the Addiction Medicine Mentorship Program, Bhumika completed a final project on addiction medicine curriculum in medical schools and was selected to present her project at the 2023 Osteopathic Medical Education (OMED) Conference, the largest gathering of osteopaths in the world. Through her work, Bhumika unknowingly found her strength in advocacy and is excited to practice family medicine to the broadest scope of her practice, as a physician and as a leader.

Bhumika is enthralled to be pursuing family medicine. She is self-motivated to continue creating change on an individualized basis for her patients, as well as executing progress-minded systemic solutions that can positively change whole communities.