Rheanna Velasquez

• Title: Outstanding Senior Award

Rheanna Velasquez is a Neuroscience major with minors in English and Public Health and the Arts from Wooster, Ohio who first found her community at OSU through Arts and Sciences' Program for Advancing Scholarship and Service (PASS). There she learned leadership skills and a commitment to diversity that led her to get involved with student groups such as the Pilipino Student Association, Pre-Med Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association, and Morrill Scholars Program. Her experiences volunteering with Crosswalk Outreach to the Homeless, providing meals and other supplies on a weekly basis to community members experiencing homelessness, have enabled her to recognize and respond to the need present in her community – sometimes as close as the doorstep to her apartment, the intersections on the way to class, and in the nooks and crannies between buildings of any given street. These experiences have informed her goals as a future physician of acting at the intersection of health and social inequality to study, address, and alleviate health disparities.