Mykiyaa Walker-Sanchez - Race, Healthcare, and Urban Communities
After graduating in May 2014, Mykiyaa Walker-Sanchez returned home to her first love, Los Angeles, where she spent the summer volunteering at Residential Care Facilities in urban communities and working with adults with developmental disabilities. With future professional plans to promote positive well being through good health practices in disadvantaged communities of color and to dismantle some of the socioeconomic barriers that disproportionately affect communities of color, Mykiyaa will pursue a career in medicine as an internal medicine physician. She is currently completing a pre-medicine post-baccalaureate program.
Area of Concentration Courses
African American Studies 116: Slavery and African American Life before 1865
City and Regional Planning 118AC: The Urban Community
City and Regional Planning 115: Urbanization in Developing Countries
Communication as a Social Force 124: Black Women, Feminism, and the Media
Urban Studies and Planning 104: Ethnic Diversity and the City
Thesis
Mykiyaa Walker-Sanchez : - "Closing the Gap: The Institutionalization of Diabetes in America" (Class of 2014)
Mykiyaa Walker-Sanchezs thesis aims to understand the how structural, environmental, and cultural factors put Black women at higher risk of obesity than white women. By looking closely at health outcomes in Los Angeles county, Mykiyaas thesis analyzes how macro level disparities are reproduced and perpetuated at the local level.
