Emily Hernandez is a stellar honors student embarking on an undergraduate research study of her dreams through the Honors College ARCH program, Advance Research and Creativity in Honors.
A junior in credits, though technically just completing her first year on campus, she always knew researching while in undergrad was a main priority for her. Typically, you join an existing lab to conduct research under an FIU faculty mentor. She explored the options available and saw many labs already had assistants. She decided to take a leap and go the independent route.
“It was kinda scary, but I was thinking, ‘Go big or go home’,” she said.
Hernandez is doing her specific study, which started from personal passion, on investigating to what extent health disparities affect the health outcomes of Hispanic children who have acute Leukemia in South Florida.
The topic is a career passion for her. She wants to become a hematology-oncologist, a doctor who studies and treats blood cancers. She hoped for a topic in line with this field, but that was different than the typical research done on it, which usually involves testing the effectiveness of a drug on patients. At the undergraduate level, she knew she couldn’t start a clinical trial, so she decided to take a more sociological angle.
Health disparities have become a more popular topic in recent years, but she noticed a gap in the Hispanic disparities data during her research. Due to the location, most of the literature took place in California and zeroed in on trends in the Mexican-American community. By choosing South Florida and covering the wide swath of nationalities present in the Hispanic community that lives here, her data could show issues that have since been overlooked.
“I want to help contribute to more current research,” she said.
Leukemia is one of the most common types of cancer in children. Blood cancers is a topic she has had an interest in for a while, for both personal reasons, and general medical curiosity.
“I find it so interesting, to learn about it and see how it affects the body,” she explained.
Once she found a topic her next step was to find mentors to attach to the project to guide her as she embarks on this new journey and co-sign her research. She was lucky enough to find three specialists who agreed to assist her. Two are FIU faculty members, Dr. Katherine Semedy and Dr. Caseo Sanchez. Semedy has experience working in pediatrics and Sanchez has done studies into blood cancers before. She also has a mentor at Bapstist who works in the field of Hematology-Oncology who has helped a lot in the paperwork with acquiring a letter of support from the children’s hospital to collect data, as a point of contact through the whole process.
“Despite me not having experience they are so willing and have been there in my corner with every question I have asked them, they have been there answering,” she said.
The research and study process began last fall, and since then has mainly involved presentations as she is still awaiting full access to the patient data since dealing with a sensitive population, children with cancer, and not yet being a reputable principal investigator, PI, it can take a while. Once that is received she hopes this summer to start analyzing the data and looking into disparities in patients such as: whether or not they have insurance and what type of insurance, access to preventative medicines (do they see their primary care provider frequently), do they have access to run of the mill testing and special treatments and how these factors affect their health outcomes, and more.
Hernandez has been able to present her work at the Florida Undergraduate Research in Jacksonville, the Undergraduate Research Conference at FIU (URFIU), and the National Conference for Undergraduate Research in California. She says it was fun seeing familiar faces at the different conferences. A nice surprise aspect of this experience is becoming a part of the close-knit undergrad research community.
“I have grown a little family with these people I have been going on the trips with. It’s cool to see how much everyone supports each other,” she explains.
She is very grateful for this opportunity she has been given through the Honors College and the whole experience has confirmed her love for research.
“I have enjoyed this journey. I love getting to focusing on a topic that I like, and getting to contribute time to watching that project grow,” she explains. “This experience has taught me to be patient, research is not going to happen in three or four months. It doesn’t happen like that, and it’s not meant to happen like that.”
She thinks, no matter the study area if there is a topic you are interested in, she recommends students to do a study. Find a mentor in that field and investigate it. It is a great addition to your resume and can help you in trying to get into graduate or medical school.
For her future, she is supposed to graduate in the spring of 2025 and hopes to go MD-PhD program, maybe in Texas where MD Anderson is a major cancer hospital in America. If not, she would be more than happy to get her medical degree in her hometown of Miami.
“I intend to not only be a provider but also become very big in research. I want to go and discover something, I want to be working with people who are making the next big thing.”
As she continues to break new ground, Emily Hernandez embodies the spirit of innovation and compassion in healthcare research.