2 minute read
Building Community Relationships Through RVU-SU's EAC
Donna Milavetz, MD, MPH, FACP, joined RVU-SU’s Executive Advisory Council (EAC) in 2017. In that time, she has supported the Council’s efforts in integrating RVU-SU into the Ivins, Utah community, most notably by providing a diverse voice at the Council’s table. In our interview with Dr. Milavetz, she talks about her work with the EAC, what inspired her to become a physician, and her mission of improving health outcomes in the U.S. through her leadership role at Steward Health.
What prompted you to join RVU-SU’s EAC in 2017? "[It’s] important for physicians in the community to give back. I think having that relationship between a community physician who is actually practicing and the medical students... is a really important part of the medical education experience. For those reasons, I thought it would be important to be a voice in that conversation.
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"I also think that as a female physician and [leader], it’s important to model a spectrum of possibilities – not only for women but for anyone – in terms of my circuitous career path: what I thought as a medical student versus what I’m actually doing today."
What does the RVU-SU EAC do and/or what is it tasked with doing? "The mission of RVU-SU’s EAC is to have an advisory board for leadership at the medical school and for community relations in Ivins and the greater St. George communities. The Young Doctors program, a project that the EAC raised and operationalized, was two-fold. [The EAC] had to be thoughtful on how to craft it, so we provided input as to what age group to start it at. It was intentional from the EAC as to the age group that we started it at because with kids, once they hit late middle school and definitely high school, there are more biases on education in STEM studies, especially with girls who tend to fall off the curve. [The EAC] really wanted to make sure that we were reaching students at a much more impressionable age to show the possibility of what could be." Visit the RVU Blog to read the rest of the interview
