Emily Lam, a first-year medical scholar from Port Moody, is the fourth recipient of Docs of BC’s Presidential Students Award in Drugs. The scholarship establishes an endowment protecting scholar and tuition charges, and textbooks for one medical scholar on an annual foundation, for the complete 4 years of their medical schooling.
An intensive choice course of evaluates potential recipients based mostly on a broad vary of standards, together with volunteer and community-based work, athletic and creative pursuits, and extra. Emily joins three earlier Presidential Students Award-winners because the fourth recipient of the scholarship, which started in 2019. Her dedication to fairness and social justice, as properly her in depth volunteer work, made Emily stand out among the many candidates.
Emily started her post-secondary research within the rigorous Well being Sciences program at SFU, throughout which she supported her friends by working as a Instructing Assistant and a Writing and Studying Peer Educator. Emily views a medical schooling as an “immense privilege” and credit the award from Docs of BC for enjoying a major function in making it doable.
“Coming from a deprived background, receiving this award has relieved such an enormous burden from my household and I, and I’m immensely grateful for a possibility to carry my story and lived expertise to drugs. This award has helped me admire how onerous I’ve labored to get right here and in addition excites me for my future medical journey forward collaborating and studying from my colleagues, mentors, and sufferers. I additionally hope that by sharing my story, I’m able to empower others with comparable experiences and backgrounds to diversify and strengthen the medical discipline.”
Emily has a robust, lifelong dedication to assist others, which stems from a deep sense of empathy. Her work up to now contains an initiative to help youngsters’s well being in her neighborhood, working with SFU’s UNICEF chapter, volunteering at her native hospital, and working a social enterprise to cut back native meals waste and meals insecurity. Emily’s drive to assist others has been acknowledged in some ways, together with recognitions at WE Day Vancouver in 2017, and the Terry Fox Humanitarian Award in 2018. The latter award acknowledges college students that persist in overcoming life adversities and display excellence of their educational, athletic, and civic lives. She credit her upbringing because the motivation to assist others.
Her private experiences have considerably influenced her present curiosity in equitable, community-focused drugs, the place she hopes to someday combine the care she gives with present social helps. “Rising up in a low-income, single-parent household as a second-generation immigrant, I’ve been conscious about well being disparities and inequities in our neighborhood from a really younger age. Whereas these challenges have paved the highway I stroll with further bumps, they’ve additionally formed the extraordinary compassion I’ve for others and fueled my ardour for creating more healthy communities for all. From serving to my father navigate numerous well being challenges and disabilities, to experiencing the bodily and psychological well being impacts of housing precarity and poverty, I carry a nuanced compassion to those that wrestle to thrive in a system that was not constructed for them.”
Emily’s major ambition is a profession in pediatrics, the place she hopes to advertise the well being and well-being of youngsters in her neighborhood.
“I consider that supporting the expansion and improvement of younger folks creates the inspiration for main happier, more healthy, and extra significant lives. I additionally see myself as a passionate advocate for well being fairness and wish to use my voice to create change with my neighborhood.”
