For the Autoimmune Registry, a nonprofit dedicated to disseminating accurate information on autoimmune diseases and furthering clinical research in this field, I worked as a summer strategy and operations Intern. I worked with the Autoimmune Registry to recruit patients for research, disseminate research results, and collaborate with researchers to find treatments for all autoimmune diseases. In addition, I managed volunteer efforts and utilized their help in conducting research on specific autoimmune diseases and edit disease profiles on the Autoimmune Registry website. Specifically, I lead the Prevalence Project and Disease Profile Project. For the Prevalence Project, I worked with volunteers to find reliable prevalence information from academic articles since there has never been a comprehensive list of prevalence figures before for autoimmune diseases. For the Disease Profile Project, I coordinated volunteer efforts to edit the disease profiles on the Autoimmune Registry website so that patients can get more reliable information from the website. From working with Autoimmune Registry, I helped patients with autoimmune diseases to find credible information about their specific diseases, ongoing clinical trials, and accurate prognosis insights.

My coursework in the environmental health sciences department at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health assisted in my ability to work with patient level data. I utilized my knowledge of programming in R to work on the Prevalence Project. I helped Aaron, the executive director, to set up capabilities for Autoimmune Registry to work with patient level data from the All of Us Research Program. The data was compiled from electronic health records for each patient, and I used my programming skills in R to clean up data and organize them in such a way that prevalence information can be obtained regarding specific autoimmune diseases. From this work, I was able to determine prevalence estimates for autoimmune diseases as computed for the entire US population, and then compared those estimates to the estimates obtained from literature reviews.

The biggest challenge for me was figuring out what steps to take in accomplishing my goals since my internship at the Autoimmune Registry was different from traditional internships at larger organizations, where there are specific tasks. To address this, I took steps in meeting with the director on a daily basis and discuss with him about what I could do to best help patients with autoimmune diseases and comply with the mission of the organization. As a result, I came up with concrete goals and steps that I needed to take, and whenever I felt like I hit a wall, I would contact the executive director and speak with him about potential next steps to take.

From this experience, I gained more knowledge about the field of medicine, specifically in the area of autoimmune diseases. I learned that, although there are millions of people with the disease in the country, not a lot of attention has been paid to it, especially the more rare forms of autoimmune diseases. Furthermore, many people are misdiagnosed and receive wrong treatment plans, which can exacerbate their conditions and worsen symptoms. I aspire to be a physician in the future, and this experience has helped to inform the kind of medicine I would like to practice in the future. I hope to become a doctor who can help communities beyond a traditional practice and address underlying issues affecting the health of communities, such as through intervention models and working with researchers to improve the quality of life for patients with innovate treatment plans.