Olivia Krivitsky (NYU Gallatin) | Bellevue Hospital – Program for Survivors of Torture (PSOT)| NYC, United States
My name is Olivia Krivitsky and I am a rising senior at NYU Gallatin, where my concentration focuses on Translational Medicine and Health Equity. This summer, I will be working under the supervision of Dr. Allen Keller at the Bellevue Hospital with the Program for Survivors of Torture (PSOT). Here, I will truly have the opportunity to work in both the human rights and medical fields, merging both of my passions. Specifically, my passions lay in the intersection of health equity, capacity building, and medical accessibility examined through a human rights framework.
I hope to have the opportunity to delve into working on varying legislation, such as anti-torture legislation. As a future physician, I hope to emulate Dr. Keller’s work. I truly hope to understand how to not only diagnose and treat my patients but also hope to learn how to advocate for my patients by applying a human rights framework. I hope by the end of my internship that I will be able to hone gain my knowledge and skillset in the field of human rights to further enable to me advocate for my future patients.
My summer work will focus on assisting asylum seekers and refugees with gaining access to medicine as well as helping them with legal assistance. I hope to dive into a deeper understanding of capacity building and learn about the intersection of law and medicine. I believe that it is pivotal that we can not only recognize and report that disparities exist in medicine but make tangible strides in reducing those disparities, in bridging the gap between the two. As a child of a Ukrainian immigrant, I am motivated to help others who have similar experiences to my own family. I hope to further understand the tangible actions that individuals, such as physicians, can take to bridge the gap between availability and accessibility. In the summer, I plan to delve into operationalizing these two terms in the context of a human rights framework.
Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions and I look forward to telling you about my journey this summer!