
Nargish Patwoary (she, her)
ASU M.A. Student, Social Justice and Human Rights (second Master’s)
Born and raised in Arizona, I am a proud daughter of immigrants, health justice activist, community organizer and storytelling enthusiast. Drawing from my own experiences and observing the injustices my community faces in healthcare, I have committed my life to advocating for the right to health. Serving as the Board Vice President for Phoenix Allies for Community Health (PACH), a grassroots social justice organization dedicated to health justice and immigrations rights with the main project being a primary care clinic that provides medical care to undocumented immigrants and migrants, I have the distinct privilege to work alongside not only with my peers from PACH and other brilliant organizations in this struggle, but also with the patients of PACH and community members. As an aspiring physician committed to health justice, it also makes sense to me to practice my activism and community organizing through an accomplice framework. Throughout my time in school, I also became involved in various organizations advocating for accessibility, diversity, inclusion and equity at Arizona State University. More prominently from ASU, as one of the Directors of Pitchfork Pantry, I led the expansion and accessibility of food and nutrition services for students at the West Valley campus. During my undergrad and first master's, I worked on several research projects noted in health inequities. Most notably, I developed my body of scholarship and knowledge on water insecurity within colonials populations. Often, when we discuss water insecurity, we overlook our own neighbors and the systems that have disenfranchised them, denying them basic rights to their water. I've also engaged in research outside of health equity, such as marketing research. This experience was different - and, arguably, unconventional for an aspiring physician - but just as resourceful for I learned about another aspect of storytelling (outside of my love for stories, media and the classes I took about it) in marketing and fundraising as a means to gain support for the causes one believes in. I had the amazing opportunity to learn this from the leaders of TGen (The Translational Genomics Research Institute) and support their Center for Rare Childhood Disorders clinic in impactful way. Now, I am engaged in immigration research at the U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Lab at ASU by Dr. Allan Colbern, while pursuing a second master's degree in Social Justice and Human Rights at ASU. I have decided to go back to school for another master's because I want to better understand how social justice movements come together to fight for/achieve human rights and how health policy shape impact the right to health—or when they don’t. I’m also eager to learn more about how patient stories in the health and medical humanities can be a powerful tool for making the right to health a reality.
