Coming to Yale was a proud moment for Ricardo Albarran. As the son of Mexican immigrants and a first-generation college graduate, he is committed in taking everything he learns at Yale back home to Chicago and applying his skills towards work in communities most often overlooked and underserved. Already an experienced public health administrator after three years at Howard Brown Health, one of the nation’s largest provider of health care services for LGBTQ patients, Ricardo was rising quickly through the ranks. He served as a health educator providing HIV and STI testing and counseling to individuals in the community and as a coordinator of the HIV Testing Together program for couples for which he also presented this work at national conferences. Before coming to Yale, Ricardo was managing Howard Brown’s sexual health Walk-In Clinic. After working with a public health advisor from the CDC during this time, he saw a graduate degree in public health as a path to also improve community health on a national level.
Now a second-year student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Ricardo has chosen to take courses with practical applications in the community. For his Public Health Communications course, he worked with a team to create an informational video in English and Spanish to maximize a patient’s interaction with their medical provider at Cornell Scott Hill Health Center. For his Community Health Program Evaluation course, Ricardo reached out to the New Haven Health Department to develop an evaluation plan for one of its programs. The hitch there was that the program that the health department wanted him to work on hadn’t been developed yet. So, Ricardo designed the program and created an evaluation plan to offer pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for teens at high risk for HIV infection through New Haven’s school-based health centers.
Ricardo also serves on the Leadership Board and is the Director of Patient Services at the HAVEN Free Clinic, the Yale student-run clinic that provides health care services to underserved or undocumented patients in New Haven. Last semester for his Qualitative Research Methods course, Ricardo worked with a colleague to explore the preparedness of medical student providers at the HAVEN Free Clinic in providing health care to LGBTQ patients. They plan on utilizing the findings and medical student recommendations to further improve services for LGBTQ patients at the clinic. Ricardo also spends time working as a research assistant for Dr. John Pachankis, whose research focuses on mental health disparities affecting LGBTQ people.
This summer, Ricardo is interning with the New Haven Health Department, gathering qualitative community data that will inform Connecticut’s forthcoming Getting to Zero HIV plan, a state-wide coordinated effort to reach zero new HIV infections. New Haven is one of three cities in the state with the highest rates of HIV infection, particularly among transgender women and young men of color who have sex with men. “Any plan on getting to zero new HIV infections must have input from these folks who are most impacted by HIV,” says Ricardo. “Bringing their voices to the forefront is important to develop a successful plan.” Through one-on-one interviews, Ricardo will be obtaining insight from these groups into their experiences, needs, and recommendations on improving HIV services in New Haven and across the state. He will ultimately present his findings to the Getting to Zero Commission, which consists of city and state stakeholders, to inform the Getting to Zero HIV plan for Connecticut.