97.9 The Hill WCHL and Chapelboro.com are your headquarters for local news and local voices in Chapel Hill-Carrboro. Every weekday morning, 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck chats with government officials, UNC scholars, business and nonprofit leaders, area musicians, and others in our community as they share their thoughts, their experience, and their expertise on the central issues of today. Click here to listen back to all of Aaron’s conversations – and tune in to “This Morning with Aaron Keck” at 7:30 a.m. on 97.9 The Hill to hear those conversations live.
Welcome to “Paying it Forward,” a monthly interview series made possible by Piedmont Health. In this series, we hear from the folks at Piedmont about the importance of community health centers – and why they chose a career in community health.
In this month’s installment, Aaron is joined by Dr. Dana Iglesias, an assistant professor in UNC’s Department of Family Medicine who works at Piedmont Health’s Siler City site and served as the inaugural medical director at Chatham Hospital’s maternity care center in Siler City. Dr. Iglesias discusses her journey to medicine – not much of a journey in her case, because she always wanted to be a doctor, as far back as she can remember. (“Sometimes people find their purpose, and sometimes you’re born with it.”)
Her journey to family medicine, though, is a different story. “In school it’s (often) seen that the brightest and best should go and do the big and fancy things,” she says – but her own teachers instilled a different value. “I went to a historically Black medical school,” she says, “(where) the brightest and best were encouraged (instead) to be engaged in primary care, and really look deeply into the hard problems in our healthcare (system) for the poorest of us and most vulnerable.”
From there, her career took her overseas, working in countries ranging from Nicaragua to Honduras to Haiti. Now she’s back in the Triangle, working with patients at Piedmont Health Services – and helping train students and young residents as well, a job she calls “hugely fulfilling.”
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