July 01, 2020
At age 14, Dr. Carla Moreira, an aspiring doctor, helped her grandfather, who didn’t speak English, navigate his medical care. Though “most of the experiences we had were great,” she was “keenly aware” of how language barriers affected his care. “I couldn’t imagine how much worse it would have been if I didn’t speak English,” recalls Moreira, who also speaks Cape Verdean Creole, Portuguese, and Spanish. “There’s a lot of things we do in medicine that we can do a lot better,” she adds.
Medicine at Brown – a magazine at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School – recently featured Dr. Moreira’s story and how she’s working to build healthier communities for diverse populations.
