Utilizing her passion for raising awareness of equitable access to health to those in the San Diego and UC San Diego community, Aries Chavira has become a prominent student health advocate. As Healthy Campus Network (HCN) Student Chair, she is able to provide her testimonial of having grown up in a low-income and underserved community, while additionally serving as a voice for the thousands of other testimonials among the student population.
Aries is a fourth-year undergraduate at UC San Diego majoring in Physiology and Neuroscience. She grew up in the San Diego area and experienced significant health disparities and difficulties in accessing health care. Such experiences have given rise to her passion for raising awareness of equitable access to health to those in the San Diego and UC San Diego community. Her goal is to ensure that each student has access to the resources available on campus and create a culture of well-being within the community. As HCN Student Chair, Aries set forth to implement her goals by co-leading the development of a HCN Designathon, based on the “hackathon” model, to invite individuals of all backgrounds and expertise to develop strategies and resources that will connect everyone as a true network and further the development of an inclusive culture of health at UCSD. She is excited to bring together the UC San Diego community in having an open forum to understand and communicate the various health needs facing students, faculty, and staff.
Outside of the Healthy Campus Network, Aries conducts research at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, on the human gut microbiome. She is currently working on developing computational techniques to predict disease severity in patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease. In the future, Aries hopes to open a large scale integrative medicine hospital aimed at managing chronic illness by combining eastern and western medical techniques.
In her free time, Aries practices yoga and is working towards becoming a certified yoga instructor. Additionally, she is a coffee connoisseur and frequents the multitudes of coffee roasters in the San Diego area.