If DMU were a buffet, Roberto Fernandez, D.O.’13, has helped himself to a very full plate. President of his class and the DMU Oncology Club, he’s served on the Global Health Student Advisory Council and Student Physicians for Social Responsibility. He served on the planning committee for this year’s College of Osteopathic Medicine Golf Benefit and is now a student representative on the COM Alumni Council. Last fall, he co-presented a talk on childhood malnutrition at the Iowa Hunger Summit; he’ll spend most of this summer as an intern at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, researching health policy relating to aging.
In May, Fernandez was appointed as the national legislative affairs representative on the executive board of the Council of Osteopathic Student Government Presidents (COSGP), a council of the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM) that is the official national representative voting voice of osteopathic medical students.
“I want to help make policy relevant to the non-policy wonk,” says Fernandez, who earned his master of public health degree at the University of Iowa. “Medical students have to understand why policy and business aspects are important and why they have to be advocates.”
