CHS Student Selected for Competitive International Global Health Program
Published April 24, 2024
By Darlene Muguiro
UTEP College of Health Sciences
Natanael Garcia, a student in the Department of Public Health’s Graduate Certificate in Public Health, was recently selected to participate in UT Austin’s Child Family Health International (CFHI) program in global health. The competitive program will allow Garcia to spend this summer in Cordoba, Argentina in a unique study-abroad opportunity that will call upon the diverse knowledge and skills he’s gained throughout his academic journey.
Garcia, a native Californian, was admitted to UT Austin and started his undergraduate education there as a Gates Millenium Scholar. He also received a highly competitive Hutchison Scholarship, awarded to only 30 students out of the 9,000 admitted to the school each year. The scholarship is a one-time award of $4,000 for outstanding first-generation college students to study abroad. Garcia began as a social work student at UT Austin but moved to New York, where he completed an undergraduate degree at The New School University. He is now a student at The CUNY Graduate Center pursuing a master's degree in Quantitative Methods, and a UTEP MPH certificate student, and is also completing his credits in the UT Austin undergraduate social work program through his scholarship.
Shortly after Garcia moved to El Paso to begin the certificate program, he began thinking about a way to use the Hutchison Scholarship he was awarded at UT Austin. A yearning to follow the legacy of his benefactors, Bill and Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation, encouraged him to begin investigating options in global health.
“I’m a first-generation student, and these are the people who helped to make my world so much bigger than what I could see outside of my own window. I wanted to make them proud,” he said.
Ultimately, Garcia’s personal connections with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies staff led him to the opportunity to apply for the CFHI program. Upon hearing that he was accepted, he shared the news with his family. He says his mom took the news as she had with past awards – proudly and humbly. He admits that he tends to put undue pressure upon himself, despite his family’s continuous support and grateful attitude for every opportunity that comes his way.
Garcia will begin his experience with CFHI on May 12th and will stay for six weeks. During that time, he will work with peers including medical doctors, but his focus will be on using the skills he gained during his social work training, concentrating on HIV education acquisition in Argentina. Specifically, he wants to learn more about Argentina’s socialized medicine system, as compared to healthcare systems in the United States. He says that the cultural sensitivity and exposure to global health challenges that he’s gained through his study in the UTEP certificate program, through faculty such as epidemiology professors Dr. Oralia Loza and Dr. Gabriel Ibarra-Mejia, have prepared him for the trip. He also believes that his intuitive understanding of his role among experts in the field will serve him well.
“CFHI is an international organization, and their focus is on helping the community. I’ll be carrying myself in a way that is respectful, reflecting that I’m nobody, really,” he said. “I don’t have any titles or expertise. I’m just a young person wanting to gain new knowledge.”
After Garcia’s graduation from the CUNY master’s degree program and UTEP certificate program, he will begin looking at professional opportunities within the public sector in public health. He says that he will also consider taking advantage of the opportunity to continue his education through the Gates Millenium Scholar program, to go into a doctoral degree.
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Go Miners!
For more information about the Department of Public Health, visit https://utep.edu/chs/phs/
