Rafael Cortes

Rafael Cortes is a rising junior at the University of Michigan studying Community & Global Public Health and Neuroscience with a minor in Science, Technology, and Society. He is passionate about addressing health disparities that disproportionately affect marginalized and vulnerable populations. Rafael plans to attend medical school and become a physician-advocate who treats patients holistically by integrating the cultural, political, socioeconomic, and personal dimensions of health that often go unnoticed.

During the Summer 2021 Global Mental Health Programs (GMHP) internship, Rafael worked closely with Dr. Kathleen Pike on developing a multidimensional index assessing organizational capacity to address mental health in the workplace. He assisted Dr. Pike with conducting systematic literature reviews and synthesizing data to quantify the assessment metric. He also collaborated with community stakeholders to gain an insightful perspective on the different factors that must be met in order to create meaningful change in workplace mental health.

Rafael found his experience in the GMHP internship to be immensely valuable. Not only did it provide him with a solid understanding of the challenges that can impact mental health in the workplace, it also allowed him to engage deeply in the research process and connect with leading experts in the field of global mental health. He knows that he will take forward what he learned this summer and apply it to his future endeavors.