Pharmacy Student Embarks on Tour for Diversity in Medicine

A pharmacy student at Drake University will be traveling across the country and representing her field for a program called Tour for Diversity in Medicine (T4D).

Third-year student Andrea Prince-Gomez will join other students from a variety of health care fields on the tour, which starts in February and will be making stops in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

Prince-Gomez said in a school press release that not many residents of her hometown of Ferguson, Missouri, attended college. However, she showed determination in her college application, financial aid, and college admission exam fees and ended up earning a degree in biology from the University of Missouri. On top of her classes, she worked 60 hours a week between 3 jobs.

Next, Prince-Gomez enrolled in the pharmacy program at Drake and picked up 30 hours a week at a pharmacy, working full time over the summer.

“Always find a way to get done what you set out to do. If you really want to be a pharmacist and there’s anything holding you back—don’t let it,” Prince-Gomez said in the school release. “There’s a lot of costs involved, and it takes a lot of time…but eventually it will all pay off. You just have to get through that struggle, to work hard, before you can have it your way in the end.”

Renae Chesnut, interim dean of the pharmacy college, described Prince-Gomez as a positive role model and an inspirational ambassador for the tour.

The goal of the tour is to inspire students of underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities to pursue jobs in medicine and dentistry. Some of the tour work involves hosting sessions on university campuses, where students can learn more about application processes and necessary skills to succeed.

“The numbers of underrepresented minorities in medical schools…are alarming,” states the Tour for Diversity in Medicine website. “T4D seeks to address this concern by using the experiences and advising of current minority physicians, dentists, and medical students to help undergraduate students along the educational pipeline to medical/dental school.”