The Explorers
Walk along with us and explore the steps University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences students take on their journey to discovering their education, careers and themselves.
Be uncompromising about who you are
“The culture of mentorship here was really something that I left feeling very strongly about.”
Alexander Castro
Meet Alexander Castro. He grew up in southwestern Virginia in a small coal town called Wise. His father is from the Dominican Republic, and his mother is from Eastern Kentucky. He attended the University of Virginia and spent a summer at the University of Pittsburgh in a pipeline program for students underrepresented in medicine. A May 2023 graduate, he is doing his residency in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
The First Step:
Commit to equity
“Be uncompromising about who you are. I think there’s a way to make your lived experience relevant in whatever career path you choose,” Castro said.
“My identity is as Appalachian as it is Latino, and I think my commitment to equity comes from both an ethnic and a demographic stance, but it’s also from a geographic, sort of socioeconomic status as well.”
His research throughout medical school was with Florian B. Mayr, assistant professor, Department of Critical Care Medicine, School of Medicine. They studied differential treatment in a nationwide cohort of veterans during the pandemic. They found that Black patients were less likely to receive evidence-based treatments for COVID-19 as compared to white patients.
The Second Step:
Find people in your corner
“I was in a situation where I kind of did everything myself. I didn’t really have those people in my corner to kind of network for me,” Castro recalled. “After coming to Pitt and establishing a bit of a relationship with folks here, and then having some of those mentoring relationships develop, I kind of came to benefit from those and really wish that I had sort of established those relationships in my own life and in my own home university a little bit sooner. Finding people who are in your corner and leaning on them is definitely something I would wish I would have done.”
The Third Step:
Support others
In medical school, he was involved with the Student National Medical Association, which supports minority medical students, and the Latino Medical Student Association. “A lot of the mentorship that I’ve been involved with has been trying to support students as they enter medical school and also some partnerships with surrounding pre-medical students and undergrads as they try to decide for themselves how to get to the next step and navigate that whole process as well,” Castro said.
The Next Steps
“I’ve been able to bear witness and experience firsthand some of these inequities, and I think that the perspective I’ve gained over the course of my life and throughout my time in undergrad and in PittMed maybe gives me a unique position to be able to effect change in the future,” Castro said.
What’s next? He’s open to exploring his options.
“I have had a vested interest in pursuing a career in critical care medicine,” Castro said. “I’m also interested in generalist medicine, whether that be primary care or hospital medicine as well. And then I also have interests in medical education and health equity that I hope to kind of implement in my future career.”
About the School of Medicine
The School of Medicine’s mission is to improve the health and well-being of individuals, communities and populations through cutting-edge research, innovative educational programs in medicine and biomedical science, and leadership in academic medicine.
We strive to implement this mission with the highest professional and ethical standards in a culture of diversity, inclusion and cultural humility. Our commitment is to foster an environment that enables all students, faculty, staff and the communities we serve to develop to their fullest potential.
