Leah Biruk is 20 years old and the daughter of Ethiopian immigrants. Family and culture are very important to her life. She is currently majoring in public health to learn more about health disparities within low-income neighborhoods and what can be done to help these communities.

Leah plans on becoming a doctor and feels having a public health background is crucial to understanding the systems that impact and support marginalized communities. She realized that minorities or people of low-income status were more likely to experience worse health outcomes due to various socioeconomic factors including environment, income status, geographic location, and etc. Leah also saw how these factors affected her family and friends. She believes having a public health background will help her provide more holistic care in the future.

When Leah first started college it was not what she expected academically. Her anxiety levels increased as she struggled with rigorous classes. At first, she didn’t know how to deal with the anxiety she was experiencing. Coming from an immigrant family she felt her parents didn’t know much about mental health and wouldn’t understand what she was going through. Leah felt alone until she found videos online of other students with similar feelings and she began to feel a lot better. At that point Leah realized she needed to pay more attention to herself and started to write about things that were stressful to her. She found writing about her stress to be really helpful. Leah also started leaning more into her faith and that helped to give her a greater sense of peace.

Taking care of her mental health allowed Leah to grow as a person and to create better strategies for dealing with her mental health. She’s learned adversities don’t have to limit her potential and that she can work through whatever difficulties may come.