Health Equity and DEI

PA Teresa Lowe grew up in Mountain Village, Alaska, a rural community where about 97% of the population is Alaska Native or American Indian. Today, as the Anchorage campus coordinator for the MEDEX Northwest PA Program, Lowe aims to help future PAs provide more compassionate care for these populations.

After her personal experience with obesity, PA Ledyenska “Ledyi” Baez Ballesteros launched an obesity medicine program to serve her primarily Hispanic patient population in San Antonio, Texas. Ballesteros talks about how the way we look at obesity medicine has changed, how she structures her program, and the adaptations she makes to better serve her patients.

Daytheon Sturges, PhD, MPAS, PA-C, DFAAPA, CHES® is the 2023 recipient of the AAPA Diversity Award. Sturges is an educator and clinically practicing PA, and is in his second term as the chair of PAEA’s Diversity and Inclusion Mission Advancement Commission.

Major Marc Latta, DHSc, PA-C, has spent more than two decades in cardiac surgery, education, and aviation medicine. Now he navigates his own transformation while building Elevated Black Man, LLC, his organization that will address sociocultural traumatology by creating safe spaces for African American men to connect and grow.