2015: David Richards

Hello! I’m going into pediatrics and my interests are in community and public health collaborations and adolescent medicine. The Generalist Scholars Program is a perfect fit for me and I am so thankful to have been a part of this group. I went to UVA for college and studied biochemistry and Italian. I worked in a basic sciences research lab and was fortunate to complete a global health project in Brasil, but by the end of undergrad I had decided that I didn’t want to pursue a PhD. So, I applied to Teach for America and spent 3 years as a high school chemistry teacher in the DC Public Schools. This was an amazing experience for me! I came to better understand the relationship between poverty, educational outcomes, and health outcomes and learned that I love working with teenagers. I applied to medical school because I thought that it would give me the flexibility and agency to combine my love of teaching with patient care and community and public health collaborations. In medical school, I’ve been very fortunate to complete projects with our local health department and with an interprofessional community health worker training program in South Africa. I’ll be completing my Pediatrics residency at UCLA and excited to start this next chapter of my training.