Q&A with Adam Arca: Researcher and MPH Student at UBC

Welcome to the Invite Health newsletter. These newsletters highlight students pursuing careers in healthcare, and the experiential learning opportunities they've had. From transplant education to geriatrics research to epidemiology, my goal with this newsletter is to introduce you to the various pathways that students can pursue in healthcare.

Whether you’re reading this on a commute, during your study break, or from the comfort of your own home, I hope you enjoy reading today’s newsletter.

- Sachi

This week, I invited Adam to share his experiences in research, spanning across queer health, skin tone diversity, and more. Adam graduated from the Bachelor of Health Sciences Program at McMaster University, and is an incoming Master’s of Public Health (MPH) student at the University of British Colombia! Read on to learn more about his experiences.

Q&A with Adam: Researcher and MPH Student with experiences across Public Health, Queer Health, and Health Equity 🏳️‍🌈

First off, tell us about your journey so far. Where do you study, what inspired you to pursue this, and what’s next? What else do you like to do outside of studying?

Hey!! My name is Adam Arca (he/him) and I am a recent graduate of the Bachelor of Health Sciences Program at McMaster University and will be starting at the University of British Columbia in the Master of Public Health program in the fall! Speaking honestly, when I think about coming into my first year of university, I most definitely felt this pressure from the environment around me to become a physician even though I didn’t have the intentions or drive to become one. Being in what is basically a ‘pre-med’ program and growing up in an environment with high expectations, there was almost an automatic assumption to go down the med path that so many other peers were hungry for. I can’t really pinpoint one climactic reason why everything shifted for me–I think it was always there from the beginning–but I do remember in my second year during the pandemic when I took one of the first social science related courses in my undergrad called Mental Health & Society where I first saw my queerness in the DSM as a mental disorder that something kind of just clicked for me. Suddenly, I was faced with the reality of the health system and its failings not only in course content, but also my own life as I started to mature and reflect on my own identity as a queer Filipino man. This led me starving for more, wanting both to dissect the inner workings of the health system, as well as my own place and belonging in communities I’ve felt disconnected to for so long. 

Eventually, I began to volunteer with harm reduction programs like The Aids Network in downtown Hamilton and queer organizations where I met so many passionate service providers, people living with HIV, people who use drugs, sex workers, students, and other queer folk who have such innovative ideas about the issues they face, but are not given the incentive to act on them. This would lead me to pursuing an Interdisciplinary Minor in Community Engagement where I learned more about community-based research as an approach to advocacy and activism that uses bottom-up, grassroots approaches to amplify the voices of marginalized folk rather than treat them as “subjects” as part of a scientific experiment. In The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory & Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health by Zena Sharman, which is this collection of essays from varying authors, there’s this certain essay written by Alexander McClelland and Zoe Dodd called Thoughts on an Anarchist Response to Hepatitis C and HIV that essentially chronicles the past, present and future of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and how the roots of the response began with “inherently anarchist actions” that resisted the misguided and monolithic efforts of the government. It told this sweeping story of where in the face of a negligent system queer people and other marginalized folk came together to form the foundations of modern harm reduction. What appeared to me in those pages and as I volunteered more and more, was possibility. What if queer people, racialized folks, and everyone living within a multitude of intersections felt safe and in control of their health? What would happen if we used the strengths of community, our instincts for mutual aid and collective action to ignite and sustain social change? I was hooked. Catapulted into this world of imagination; one where I would never feel scared and undermined sitting in the chair of a doctor’s office choosing between disclosure or non-disclosure.

Currently, I aspire to do work with queer people, racialized folks–anyone living within a multitude of intersections–to reimagine care that centers their knowledge, expertise, and struggles. I want care to feel good, to feel safe, to be liberating rather than dehumanizing, and to do this, I hope to eventually get my PhD in Public Health so that I can use my power and privilege as an academic to center their voices and implement research and initiatives that are relevant and sustainable to them. I don’t really dream of labor or have a particular career in mind, I just want one that can fulfill all my physical needs, while working towards my ultimate vision of queer liberation. I acknowledge that my dreams are almost fantastical and unrealistic in scope at times, but I also think that in a world that is continuously on fire, where we are constantly reminded of our oppression, that it is powerful, radical even, to be optimistic. I remember being in this class with my friend where we used to talk ourselves into a spiral; lamenting about gentrification, capitalism, the patriarchy, climate change, the pitfalls of academia, you name it. And the main conclusion always came back to hopelessness, this vast realization that nothing we contribute to society will ever fix anything. But what this taught me and what I continued to find within others is that there is always hope. After all, the reason I can exist today is because of a legacy of queer people who fought and died in the name of love, because of immigrants who persisted regardless of the barriers that were presented to them. That’s what I think is moving me forward.

Other than my academic aspirations, I like to unwind through really any and all creative outlets. I read a lot of books, bookstores are one of my favorite places to hang out and I spend way too much money so I probably should dial it down. I also write stories and poetry, draw and paint, listen to music, anything that can stimulate my imagination in some shape or form or where I can learn something I've never heard of before. But most of the time, I am either procrastinating or napping or watching some crappy show on Netflix.

Tell us about your research experiences.

Realizing that I am passionate about research in my third year after doing a project with the Anatomy Lab at McMaster on body donation, I started to join more and more research projects that were more related to my interests. Currently, I am involved in a bunch of different projects which are:

1. A scoping review about skin tone diversity within clinical assessment with the McMaster Anatomy Lab;

2. The evaluation of an equity, diversity, decolonization, and inclusion curricula for social entrepreneurs with a community partner in Hamilton that is just about wrapping up on my end;

3. I have a job as a research assistant in participant management with the Canadian Longitudinal Study in Aging on a sub-study aiming to predict cognitive disorders in older populations; 

4. At the Centre for Community Based Research I am a summer intern supporting a couple projects surrounding equity topics;

5. I am just starting a study that is aiming to evaluate sex and gender diversity within health profession education in the anatomy lab;

6. My personal passion project and my senior thesis called ​Networks of Support: How LGBTQIA+ Asians Navigate Social Supports and Services in Canada & the United States which I’ll be highlighting here!

The real idea for this research project came out of my own struggle with finding a sense of belonging and understanding in the communities that I belong to. I’ve always felt that in order to fit into society, into my queerness, my Filipino culture, I had to sacrifice some aspect of myself, but that began to change when I started to meet other people who understood me; where I didn’t need to explain who I am, why I do the things I do, why I exist. That full sense of community and support is what I seek out to understand and nurture within my research. 

The landscape for queer Asians within countries like Canada and USA is also becoming extraordinarily hostile. In the past few years, xenophobic rhetoric and anti-Asian hate amidst the COVID-19 pandemic as well as as anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation has been on an alarming rise with the introduction of nearly 500 bills mostly targeting trans and gender-nonconforming individuals in the United States since the beginning of 2023 and the revision of policy 713 in New Brunswick that harms trans youth. I think iIt’s now more important than ever that queer Asians who exist amongst these intersections have strong support systems that will not only be able to protect against distress, but cultivate a community of care and mutual aid. This project is two-fold: a systematic review that examines the literature on social supports within LGBTQIA+ Asians in Canada and the United States from 2003 to 2023 to inform policy, practice, and encourage future research, especially by and for those of queer Asian experience and an asset map of queer-Asian specific social support services in Canada (i.e., community groups, identity-oriented events, etc.) to identify the types of services that are available and where they may be needed.

How did you come across this opportunity? What did the application process entail?

When I first started thinking about what I wanted to do for my thesis in third year, I knew I wanted to do research that meant something to me. Looking at different potential supervisors at McMaster, I realized that there weren't really any people doing work in queer health. That’s why I started to look outside of my school and this eventually led to a research group called Re:searching for LGBTQ2S+ Health that had projects and goals that really aligned with my interests. I basically just cold emailed them asking about thesis supervisor opportunities, they connected me with a supervisor, and the rest was history!  

What were some of the most notable highlights that you had from the experience? 

When it comes to research, I think the biggest highlights for me come from finding something new. It’s so interesting to look through different articles from different points in time where resources, access to information, and the social and political climate may have been very different. For example, I noticed that a lot of the early research I was looking at tended to focus on the study of HIV/AIDS which was most likely due to an after-effect of the epidemic that swept across North America in the 80s/90s and was the sole focus of a lot of the literature on queer folk. But for me, the most poignant moments came as I was reading articles about queer people in the early 2000s. In particular, there’s this ethnographic study by Gina Masequesmay published in 2003 that examines the inner workings of a queer Vietnamese support group. In it, a participant talking about the importance of being around people with similar lived experiences, says:

Seeing yourself on paper in a time when you were just a baby is so odd. Growing up in a not-so-diverse area and in the Catholic school system, there were barely any people like me I could put a face to. Being who I was, being queer, being Asian, there was this sense of novelty and ambiguity that was so hard for me to navigate because I didn’t have any role models; there was no one I could look up to, no one I could talk to or who could hear me out and tell me that it was ok to exist as I was. But seeing this, reading these papers, I felt this immense affirmation in knowing that we have always been here, that we still use the same language, struggle, and love the same ways we have and will continue to do. 

What I really love so much about research is the connections you form and the community that you are able to cultivate through working towards a specific goal. Just being able to connect with another queer scholar was so important to me and made everything so worthwhile. I specifically remember having a conversation with my supervisor about my thesis and its purpose. I was anxious about doing a project that relates so highly to my experience because it felt like I was being selfish in some way. But she reaffirmed that a lot of research is self-serving in some capacity, that it is better that I am a part of the community because I can understand and identify what is needed within it, that there is power in people being able to tell their own stories.

Additionally, I had the opportunity to present my research at the Bachelor of Health Sciences poster day which was really great to have conversations with others and share things that people may have not known before.

Did this experience lead you to pursue any other related opportunities? 

Reflecting on the direct impact of working on this project, I am now working on refining my manuscript for publication into a research journal with the help of my supervisor. I am also in the process of applying to research conferences to share my findings and network with others within my field. I’m actually attending one hosted by LQBTQ Psychology Canada this month and applying to others for this year and the next!

The way I really think this experience has impacted me the most is helping me realize how passionate I am about becoming a queer health researcher, supporting my community, and advocating for social change. This has led me to pursue other opportunities that align with my goals like publishing poetry and becoming a volunteer researcher for the Queer Toronto Literary Magazine, participating in the Provincial Youth Ambassador program at LGBT YouthLine, being a community group facilitator at McMaster’s Pride Community Centre, or volunteering for the Sexual Health Outreach Team at the Student Wellness Centre at McMaster. I also sought out other research opportunities to refine my research skills like I mentioned before. I think once you find a goal or niche that is worth putting your time and energy in, it’s easy to find other opportunities that align with them.

Where can students go if they want to learn more about this experience? 

Feel free to message me on my Instagram @adamarca, my email [email protected], or my LinkedIn!

Is there anything else that you would like to add for Invite Health readers?

Here’s some advice:

1. Embrace fluidity: Being raised in a society that values rigid binaries of being, queerness teaches us that there is beauty in the between, in the unknown.

2. Take a risk: There are so many opportunities out there that you can apply for or emails that you can send to a professional in your field of interest. My current internship at the Centre for Community Based Research came out of me just emailing them about potential student opportunities and now I am working and learning within a field I'm really passionate about.

3. Find a community or field that you can thrive and feel safe in

4. Reflect on your intentions: While I don’t think there are really any bad or good reasons for pursuing a field, I do think it’s important that we consider why we do the things we do, and whether or not we may be unintentionally harming or helping another group of people.

5. Find something you’re passionate about: Obviously very much easier said than done but once you find something worth fight for, you become more driven and resilient in the face of opposition, and you will be taken places you never thought you’d end up

6. Be informed: Strive for knowledge, seek to understand, and listen to diverse voices. Here’s some recommendations that I love because I never have the opportunity to lol:

   1. Queer Nation Manifesto: Made during the AIDS epidemic in New York, this is some of the most powerful and radical writing I’ve ever read. Queers, read this!

   2. Ocean Vuong: Queer Vietnamese poet and novelist literally anything he makes is magical, if you’re feeling moody and in need of a good cry pick up On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous or literally anything he writes or says.

   3. James Baldwin: Iconic. Read this man. Favorite novel of his is Giovanni’s Room, you’ll sob.

   4. Audre Lorde: Powerful writer and activist that continuously teaches me so much

   5. bell hooks: I really like the Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, & Love, a really thought-provoking deconstruction of how the patriarchy affects all genders and how we can move towards gender equity.

7. Watch Everything Everywhere All at Once: Michele Yeoh is Mother and Key He Quan is Father and it’s the best movie I’ve ever watched and made me more optimistic about the world lmao.

8. Burn it down: There is so much more possibility than what we have now and the only thing limiting us is our imagination.

About Invite Health 💌

Invite Health newsletters highlight students pursuing careers in healthcare, and the experiential learning opportunities they've had. Invite Health can also be the start of building a network, learning a new skill, or finding your next opportunity.

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