Meet the 2026 BCPH Thought Fellows

Dahlia Chavez is a medical student at Rush Medical College and a national leader in health equity and medical education reform, with leadership roles in the Latino Medical Student Association and Medical Students with Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses. Her work focuses on advancing disability justice and addressing structural inequities that shape who enters and succeeds in the physician workforce. She develops programs, research initiatives, and advocacy strategies that bridge medical education and public health outcomes. Her broader goal is to design scalable, systems-level solutions that improve access, representation, and quality of care for historically underserved communities.

She brings both lived experience and systems-level insight into how inequities shape health outcomes long before patients enter the clinic, with a focus on amplifying community-informed solutions and bridging gaps between education and public health.

Abiola Ayodele is a public health professional specializing in environmental health and occupational safety, with experience in workplace risk assessment, safety program development, and health promotion. He is an active member of the American Society of Safety Professionals and the Occupational Safety Society of Nigeria, and currently contributes to Canadian Occupational Safety magazine.

He has led projects translating health research into practical interventions and produced content that makes complex public health issues accessible. With three to four years of journalism experience before pivoting into environmental and occupational health and safety, he brings strong skills in research, communication, and storytelling, allowing him to translate complex public health issues into ideas that resonate and inspire action.

Emily Lopez is a senior at UC Santa Cruz double majoring in Global and Community Health and Film and Digital Media, with a minor in Latin American and Latino Studies. She has fallen in love with public health storytelling, especially through forms of media and getting to understand people's lived experiences.

Emily cares deeply about uplifting voices from low-income communities and learning how their experiences shape the way public health is understood and accessed. Her work explores how access to medicine is shaped by structural inequities, how marginalized communities are often geographically placed in areas with limited access to hospitals and clinics, and how this spatial inequality directly impacts health outcomes.

Dr. Paola Acevedo is a primary care clinical pharmacist and diabetes care and education specialist with over a decade of experience advancing chronic disease care in underserved, community-based settings. Her work focuses on improving access to diabetes education, medications, and technology for people living with diabetes, while partnering with primary care teams to deliver more equitable and empowering, patient-centered care.

She has led population health initiatives, developed diabetes self-management educational programs, and trained interdisciplinary teams to better support people living with diabetes. She is passionate about reframing chronic disease care by addressing the systemic barriers that shape health outcomes, especially for those in underserved communities, and shifting away from the patient-blaming narrative that has defined how we provide care to vulnerable populations for far too long.

As a BCPH Thought Leader, she hopes to elevate real-world conversations on health equity and the challenges of navigating the health care system, share practical solutions, and use storytelling to drive more compassionate, proactive, and effective models of care.

Josephina Lin is a public health professional dedicated to advancing health equity through community-led, creative, and culturally responsive approaches. She serves as a Research, Communications, and Health Equity Associate at Harvard Medical School where she improves access to free, preventive health care for Boston's underresourced communities.

She holds a Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health from Harvard Medical School and is currently a Master of Public Health candidate at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Health and Social Behavior with a concentration in Population Mental Health, where her work integrates community-based care, storytelling initiatives, and behavioral health innovation.

Josephina seeks to elevate voices historically marginalized within public health narratives. Through her work in community health, she understands how community insights are often obscured in traditional health systems and hopes to use this fellowship to create a more equitable public health system by integrating community expertise with evidence, crafting accessible public health knowledge, and reimagining how care is delivered and valued.