By Dylan Scott, Illustration: Julianna Brion/Vox, Vox, June 23, 2023
Joslyn Conchas grew up with a single mom in Fresno, slipping in and out of poverty. She became interested in medicine while helping her grandfather pick ticks off their dogs and started dreaming of becoming a vet.
Then her grandpa got sick, afflicted by high cholesterol and heart disease, and she began thinking about taking care of people instead. She saw how hard it was for her grandfather, who spoke only Spanish, to communicate with her doctor, who did not speak any.
Not long ago, Conchas’s ambitions might have led her far away from the San Joaquin Valley — to college, to medical school, and to a residency at a teaching hospital in a big city, with no guarantee she would return to the place she came from.
Comments (0)