For most people, what’s in the box is a complete mystery. A coil of blue translucent wire that is compressed diagonally, like a porcupine in a burrow. The peeling fabric is a palm-sized square that sticks to the skin like a porcupine quill. What looks like an arc pen or apple pencil soup stacked with clear liquid capsules reflects the viewer’s embarrassed look.
But for Stephen Garcia Machuca, these items were nothing more than nectars of life — for millions of people with chronic illnesses, especially the uninsured people in the Bay Area where Stephen’s work serves. A public health and health policy student, Stephen is urged to tackle the problem of access to life-saving medicine, which is plagued by American medicine. He understands how if you don’t have access to insurance, you don’t have access to the medicines you need to survive. As you can see, Stephen lives with chronic illnesses (like me) and is witty to use those experiences to lead to the service life he has built up in and out of Harvard. I am nurturing my life.
Stephen, a first-generation American, grew up in a small town in Colorado on the outskirts of Aspen. In powder and privilege, he had a front row seat on inequality in access to medical care from housing. And he decided to do something about it. Stephen applied for Harvard, where he focused on the history of science and research on global health and health policy. He decided to learn how discriminatory policies could be changed to promote and respect healing, whatever the patient’s financial means. And when Harvard left the student, Stephen didn’t see any reason to quit this job.
Shortly after being kicked out of campus, Stephen returned to Colorado. There, he acted as a Covid-19 contact tracer for the local health department. Stephen has linked patients to rental assistance, food assistance, and medical relief programs. He understood how much false information was spreading about Covid-19 among his community. He learned how to listen compassionately and understand the perspective that most Harvard students feel illogical and distant from the world. As one of the only bilingual contact tracers in English and Spanish, Stephen is committed to ensuring that the community is not left behind in the ever-changing covid information and policies.
At the same time, Stephen was a Harvard student and was completely absorbed in canvas classes, in addition to studying the rigorous Crimson EMS program. Burnout was terrible, but he needed school health insurance. If he took a vacation, he couldn’t afford the medicine he needed for his daily survival. So, to fight some of that burnout, Stephen received his $ 5,000 housing allowance and rented a cubicle at his local WeWork. Everyone rarely wants to have a cubicle, but for Stephen it was a coveted place of separation between school, work, and family life.
Still, working full-time while being an online student is only sustainable for a very long time. But to take a vacation, Stephen needs to solve the health insurance problem. After countless surveys, cover letters and interviews, he got a job at HealthCorps (AmeriCorps program) in San Francisco. In addition to health benefits, this position was provided with benefits to cover living expenses. Needless to say, this role could not be more ideally aligned with Stephen’s mission and values. Stephen works as a diabetes care coordinator to improve outcomes for underserved patients with chronic illnesses. He supports a program called Healthright 360. This is one of the few programs in the country where no one turns away because they can’t pay. So Stephen distributes free survival medicines to uninsured and uninsured patients. He also offers educational programs and boxes of fresh fruits and vegetables from “food pharmacies” free of charge to those who need them.
When Stephen shares his story, I can feel the brilliance of his face under the phone line. You can hear what it would be like for us to receive emergency medical supplies in a slightly different life, and what we both think. At the very least, I hope you have access to such programs.
At that moment, in the words of Tennille Towns, we feel very “geographically tossed, shining or raining,” and our alternative life pulsates under the surface. That’s not what we think about. At Harvard, we push them deeper and transcend their tragedy of being inaccessible by our relentless wit. But through our hard work and creativity, our non-momentary hesitation to seize every opportunity to come our way, we have the courage to reflect on such moments. And come back.
— Abby T. Forbes ’22 is Adams House’s Philosophy Concentrator. Her column “The Trades” appears every other Friday.
