Ana Paulina Serrano

Sara McKnight Transitional Living Center | El Paso, Texas

Ana Paulina Serrano is a rising senior studying Neuroscience at Harvard College and is from El Paso, Texas. During her freshman year, Ana Paulina took a course where she learned about the history of the borderland and how violence was employed to perpetuate many current social inequalities faced by Hispanic minorities. One particular event that heavily impacted her was the involuntary sterilization of Mexican women in California hospitals throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Some were coerced to sign forms written in English which they could not read or comprehend. As a Latina woman with many family members who only speak Spanish and as an aspiring doctor, she was shocked to learn of this piece of dark history of the healthcare industry in the borderland. Since she was a sophomore, Ana Paulina has served as the president of Harvard’s chapter of the Kidney Disease Screening and Awareness Program (KDSAP), which organizes free community chronic kidney disease screenings for underserved minority communities in the Greater Boston area. These, and other, experiences have furthered Ana Paulina’s passion for medicine, while simultaneously exposing her to the inequalities that people experience in the healthcare system due to the intersectionality of health, immigration status, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. 

This summer, Ana Paulina is honored to serve her community in her hometown of El Paso by working at the Sara McKnight Transitional Living Center (TLC), a residential center that provides a bridge to successful self-sufficiency for women who are homeless. Ana Paulina will work with the TLC to guide and support women via individual case management, job search assistance, referrals to mental health services, childcare and healthcare access, among other services.