“I completed over 75% of my clerkships at Grady and got to build great relationships with my patients, their families and hospital staff. There’s no place like Grady! #GradyMadeEmoryProud”
Christian Freeman, 2021 MD candidate, Emory School of Medicine, is from Memphis, Tenn., and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2015. After graduating, she worked as a high school science teacher through Teach for America and taught in her hometown for two years. She matriculated into Emory School of Medicine in 2017.
Christian will continue her training in obstetrics and gynecology and “applied very widely, all over the country, and was very impressed by all of the programs where I interviewed.” Matching somewhere that values equity and inclusion, reproductive justice and providing comprehensive reproductive health care is important to her. “I really enjoyed my OB-GYN experiences with Emory as a medical student and would be very happy to match here! Many of my mentors and biggest supporters are faculty here, so I am confident I could continue to thrive here,” says Christian. She matched in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California San Francisco in San Francisco, California.
During her time at Emory, she served on the Student National Medical Association (SNMA) and was elected president in her first year. The Emory Chapter SNMA is committed to supporting current and future underrepresented minority (URM) medical students, addressing the needs of underserved communities and increasing the number of clinically excellent, culturally competent and socially conscious physicians. SNMA is dedicated to ensuring that medical education and services are culturally sensitive to the needs of diverse populations and to increasing the number of African American, Hispanic/Latino and other students of color entering and completing medical school. In 2018, Christian received the Emerging Scholars Award, the highest honor presented to students by the National Medical Association. The award is given to two African American medical students who have demonstrated outstanding academic achievement, leadership and potential for distinguished contributions to medicine.
Christian says the Emory Chapter SNMA “worked very closely with the School of Medicine Office of Admissions and Office of Multicultural Affairs to recruit one of the largest cohorts of URM medical students at that time. These efforts have been sustained over the past few years, with 41 URM students in the current first-year class.”
Last year, she served as SNMA mentorship chair and worked with Dr. Tracey Henry to establish the Emory EMPACT Mentoring program for URM medical students. Throughout medical school, she has also been involved with the Student Subcommittee of the Executive Curriculum Committee, serving as chair this year. “We have promoted incredible student curricular proposals this year including wellness half-days for clinical students and the establishment of the new curricular thread for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Racial Advocacy,” says Christian. She also served as a curriculum coordinator for Emory Pipeline Collaborative, a comprehensive three-year program of learning, mentoring, college preparation and health careers exposure activities to prepare high school students for entry into health professions.
Her favorite memories and experiences all surround the fantastic patients she’s cared for at Grady Memoria Hospital. “I completed over 75% of my clerkships at Grady and got to build great relationships with my patients, their families and hospital staff. There’s no place like Grady! #GradyMadeEmoryProud,” says Christian.
Christian says her class did not want to experience Match Day virtually but that of course, safety is the number one priority. “We are the first class to have our entire fourth-year experience disrupted due to COVID-19, and hopefully we are the last to experience this. Our fourth year was supposed to be a time full of travel and making memories with our classmates before we (possibly) part ways. That experience has been taken from us and it’s hard, honestly. I want to see my classmates open their envelopes and cheer with excitement when they see where they matched. We won’t get to do that this year. We have been apart for over a year now and there’s not really a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s very isolating, but I am excited for all of the social media posts and announcements!”