Balikbayan boxes carrying medical supplies to the Philippines

"Being in a hospital is stressful, knowing that you are there to treat something dysfunctional with your body," Nayla Jimenez says. That burden is amplified for children, she says. Pediatric patients often do not have the understanding of their own condition that adults do, and many experience psychosocial stress after a hospital stay.

In the Philippines, she says, government hospitals, "often overcrowded and understaffed, serve citizens with no health insurance or funds to pay for their hospital stay." Families advocate for their children to receive the care they deserve, and that often means overtime work and other children in the family bringing in income.

“As an aspiring physician-scientist, founding and leading PHI showed me that health is shaped as much by culture and access as it is by biology.”

Nayla Jimenez

Philippine Health Initiative, or PHI, is the organisation she founded and leads. It is a student-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit. It connects underserved pediatric medical and educational facilities in the Philippines to material and financial resources in the United States, while sharing Filipino culture and collaborating with its communities. The donations travel in Balikbayan boxes, "a global phenomenon in which Filipino immigrants aid their loved ones in the Philippines," she says. A box is both "a physical way to ship donations to the Philippines and a symbolic reminder of our heritage."

The whole thing is run by students. She studies at the University of Florida.