Reflective & Op-Ed

By M.E. Avila One of the greatest lessons I learned as a Culture of Health Leadership Institute (CoHLI) Fellow was that health equity is never just about healthcare. It is about relationships. It is about power. It is about trust. Most importantly, it is about whether our institutions are willing to hold themselves to the same standards they expect from the communities they serve. That lesson has stayed with me throughout my career. Whether I have been working alongside commu

By M. E. Avila When I wrote When Survivors Lose Control of Their Story Again, I believed I was writing about one experience. I have since realized I was writing about something much larger. I wrote about what it feels like when a survivor begins to lose control of their story again. I didn’t realize I was also writing about what happens when trust begins to change. Since publishing that article, survivors, advocates, colleagues, friends, and complete strangers have reached ou

By M. E. Avila I thought I had healed. Not in the simplistic way people often imagine healing. Not in a way that erased what happened or made the memories disappear. I knew those experiences would always be a part of me. But I thought I had reached a place where my story belonged to me. I thought I would decide when to tell it. I thought I would decide who to tell it to. I thought I would decide how much of it I shared. That choice mattered because for much of my life, I didn