Public health advocacy requires considerable insight into the major issues that affect communities. How best to gain this insight? What role does direct personal experience play?

Today Seciah Aquino, DrPH, MS shares how her lived experience as an immigrant has informed her work as Executive Director of a leading health equity advocacy organization, the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California. How did her experience, first as a young child in Guatemala and later as an immigrant living in Gardena, California, inspire her to pursue higher education and transform her life, and the lives of others? And how did that experience inform her response to the COVID pandemic?