Promise Clinic Gala Dinner Speech by Students Elena, Mona and Gabie

Below is a transcript of a student speech given at the 2026 Promise Clinic Gala Dinner which serves as an excellent testament to the work of the Promise Clinic students.

Hi everyone, we are Elena, Mona, and Gabie, and we are part of Team 9. We are grateful to be up here tonight and to share a little bit about what drew us to Promise Clinic and what being part of it has meant to us.

Elena:

Throughout my time as an undergraduate student at Rutgers, I got involved in the New Brunswick community in a variety of ways. It was something I really loved, because while I enjoyed giving back, I always found that the community had just as much to teach me.

When I first heard about Promise Clinic, I was excited to see how the medical knowledge I was building over the years could allow me to provide a different kind of service. But I also looked forward to understanding how my patients’ life experiences created barriers to their healthcare, and discovering ways I could help them as a medical student.

Mona:

For me, I was drawn to PC for similar reasons. I wanted to support patients beyond just creating a treatment plan and help address the factors that are just as critical to a patient’s outcome, like stable housing and access to food. Having grown up in Middlesex County and spent so much time in New Brunswick, I’ve always felt a strong responsibility to give back to the community that helped shape who I am today. New Brunswick is more than just the Rutgers campus, it’s a vibrant community but one where many individuals face very real, everyday challenges.

Being part of Promise Clinic is a privilege because it allows me to help patients navigate those challenges and connect them with the resources they need. It’s an opportunity to care for the whole person, not just their illness. And to me, that’s what Promise Clinic represents.

Gabie:

I was looking forward to becoming a part of Promise Clinic before I even started at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. One of the main reasons I chose to pursue medicine was the opportunity to truly know my patients; not just their diagnoses, but their stories, their challenges, and what matters most to them.

Promise Clinic has given me the chance to begin doing that even as a first-year medical student. Here, patients are not just seen, they are known. And as a student doctor, I have been able to build relationships that go beyond a single visit. I’ve had the opportunity to follow patients over time, to celebrate their progress, and to support them through challenges and adversity. These relationships are what makes the field of medicine so special and what makes Promise Clinic such a valuable and formative institution in the New Brunswick community.

As some of you may know, the reason our team is speaking tonight is because last year, we built a very meaningful connection with our patient. Our patient’s health required us to see him every week, and because of that we were able to build a sense of trust that led him to, over time, feel comfortable sharing struggles that were quietly getting in the way of his care.

He shared that he had severe visual impairments that left him functionally blind, and unable to take his medications because he couldn’t read his pill bottles. Because of this, our team redesigned our entire approach using pillboxes, different sized bottles, and rubber bands to create textures so he could distinguish his medication by touch. And it worked. But more than that, it deepened our relationship with him in a way that extended far beyond our weekly visits.

When he was eventually hospitalized, we were able to help the medical team prepare for his discharge by sharing what we knew about how to set up his medications. And through our time with him, we knew how to explain his illness to him in ways he could understand, so we would go in the afternoon to talk about his hospital course with him. I remember going to see him during that hospitalization and introducing myself to him — because there were so many people checking in on him, and of course, he couldn’t see me. He stopped me and said I didn’t need to introduce myself because he recognized my voice. That moment stayed with me. It reflected the trust that had developed over time, and how even small, consistent interactions can make a patient feel seen in a system that can otherwise feel overwhelming.

Our patient ultimately decided to return to his home country, but getting there was far from simple. Financial barriers, limited treatment options, and even obtaining a passport stood in the way. As a medical student, I never expected to accompany a patient to a consulate or coordinate care in another country, but that experience made it clear how forces outside of medicine, like policy and bureaucracy, can profoundly shape a patient’s health.

It was frustrating at times, but also deeply meaningful. Our patient’s wish to return home to be with his family gave our work direction and purpose. And seeing people beyond the clinic, consulate staff, multiple care teams, and family, come together to support that transition was incredibly powerful. It reminded me that health care doesn’t begin or end in the clinic. It starts in the community, and it depends on all of us working together to truly care for our patients.

We share these moments because we believe it says everything about what Promise Clinic is. We provide healthcare to patients who do not have access to it, which is very impactful. But it’s the connections we build, the trust we earn, and the way we come to truly know our patients that makes this experience something we will carry with us for the rest of our careers.

And while our team is up here tonight, I know that everyone in this room has felt this kind of connection with a patient — whether that is your own patient, or if you are part of SComm, a face that you look forward to seeing when you come into clinic.

We are so proud of what this clinic has built, and we feel lucky every day that our patients trust us with their stories. Thank you.