UNO AND UNMC Collaborate to diversify next generation of healthcare providers

Urban Health Opportunities Progam Scholar and first-generation college student Daniela Cortés Reyes aims to give back to the community that provided for her

by Connie White

Growing up in the Omaha suburb of Bellevue, Daniela Cortés Reyes made regular visits to OneWorld Community Health Centers for back-to-school sports physicals, vision checks and vaccinations.

At age 24, Cortés Reyes is going back to the South Omaha clinic, this time wearing a white doctor’s coat.

She will graduate in May 2023 with a degree from the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Instead of moving away to complete her residency in another state, Cortés Reyes decided to stay close to home.

She will spend the next four years based at OneWorld. She hopes her experiences — Cortés Reyes lived in Mexico until age 5 and is a fluent Spanish speaker — will help her build connections with patients from diverse backgrounds who come into the clinic.

“I will be able to give back to the community that once provided for me,” said Cortés Reyes, who graduated summa cum laude from the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 2019 with a degree in neuroscience.

Cortés Reyes is a participant in the Urban Health Opportunities Program (UHOP), a partnership between UNO and University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) aimed at increasing the number of physicians who come from communities that are underrepresented or underserved. UHOP helps students prepare for medical careers through tuition assistance, mentoring, help with medical school applications, as well as preparation for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT). Students who meet the program’s requirements are guaranteed admission to medical school at UNMC.

HEALTH CARE FOR UNDERSERVED AREAS

UHOP was started in 2016 by Paul Davis, Ph.D., a professor of biology at UNO. He modeled UHOP after the Rural Health Opportunities Program, a separate UNMC program to encourage rural residents to pursue careers in health care fields to address a critical need for providers in rural Nebraska.

UHOP is geared toward training health care professionals to work in underserved communities in urban areas, particularly in North and South Omaha.

Davis noted the lack of diversity in medicine, in terms of both race and socioeconomic factors. More than 56% of active physicians are white. About 17% are Asian. Fewer than 6% are Hispanic, and 5% are Black, according to a report from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Since the pre-medicine program began in 2016, 83% of participants have gone on to pursue a health care career, whether that be as a doctor, a dentist, a physician assistant or in another medical field.

In 2021, UHOP was expanded to include a pre-nursing track for UNO students. Those students are now in their second year at UNO before they move on to UNMC to finish their nursing degrees.

Cortés Reyes said UHOP has been “a beacon of aid” as she works toward her goal of becoming a family practice doctor. Without UHOP, Cortés Reyes said, she would have had to come up with the $1,500 fee to pay for her MCAT prep course.

She said she also received support from her UHOP peers — “We’ve all lifted each other up” — through academic preparation for the 7 ½-hour MCAT and a road map and structure to get through medical school.

HER PARENTS’ INFLUENCE

Cortés Reyes’ family moved to the United States from the small Mexican town of Cerrito Colorado when she was 5 years old. With her father already living and working in the U.S., Cortés Reyes, her mother and three siblings first lived in California, before moving to Bellevue when she was 8.

Her parents, Luis Cortés and Rosa Reyes de Cortés, work at a Council Bluffs manufacturing plant that makes frozen meals.

Cortés Reyes, who graduated from Bellevue West High School in 2015, credits her parents with instilling in her and her siblings a desire to further their education. One sibling is studying to become a physical therapist; one is a lawyer; and the other is a certified public accountant.

Her parents were not able to finish grade school.

“These are opportunities that they would have loved to have had,” Cortés Reyes said.

BUILDING PATIENT TRUST

During her residency, she will gain experience in obstetrics, pediatrics, surgery and hospitalist medicine. Cortés Reyes hasn’t decided where she wants to practice medicine after she finishes her residency, whether that’s in an academic hospital or a community-based setting like OneWorld.

Wherever she goes, she wants to build connections with her patients. Cortés Reyes said that people from underserved communities utilize health care at a much lower rate than the general population, even if they have health insurance. The thinking, she said, is “I will do it when I get sick.”

Some populations are even less likely to seek care, Cortés Reyes said, if they don’t have “providers who look like them or speak like them.”

It’s well established, Davis said, that people are more likely to seek care if they feel a provider “gets them.”

Diversity allows physicians to better understand patients within a larger context, such as their upbringing, culture and socioeconomic realities. Without such an understanding, routine visits may be put off, and, as a consequence, patients become less healthy.

“By the time they do address their problems, it’s usually an emergency situation,” Davis said.

He has seen the issue even among UHOP students. Davis recalled asking UNO freshmen who were preparing to job shadow a physician when they had last gone to see a doctor.

“The majority answer was 5 years old,” he said. “That was the last time the majority of our students had been to the doctor.”

The anecdote, Davis said, demonstrates the problem. He hopes that UHOP can be a part of the solution.

Building those connections allows for better conversations about potentially sensitive topics such as substance abuse or weight loss. No one is more vulnerable, Cortés Reyes said, than when they are sitting on an exam table in a doctor’s office.

“When someone is vulnerable,” she said, “it’s important to establish trust.”

And, Cortés Reyes said, “it’s important we listen.”