“And I really believe emergency medicine signifies the social justice part of medicine because we see everything,” she emphasized. “We see humanity as its rawness come through the doors, and there are days that are harder than others, but we’re committed to taking care of those patients. We also need to be committed to making sure that our outcomes are equitable and that we’re doing as much as we can to eliminate any inequities.”

Looking back on her career to this point, Dr. Calderon says moving into research became a way to impact a whole community, instead of helping individual patients.

So, what’s next for Dr. Calderon’s research? She wants to expand her mission even further. Her goal is to figure out how to identify high-risk young people in prevalent HIV areas–those who don’t go to the doctor very often–so they can be linked to health care. Dr. Calderon’s Beth Israel team also wants to expand their outreach beyond HIV and Hepatitis C into a literal pain point for health equity—pain management.

It can be overwhelming work, she agrees, but she prefers to take a methodical approach to health equity problems, similar to the “organized chaos” she’s used to from the emergency department. Dr. Calderon encourages others to get involved in health equity efforts because “Every little bit that someone does adds to the correction of some of the things that are not right in medicine,” she said.

Her inner drive to help others, first sparked when the was a child living in the Manhattan projects, still burns bright today. Dr. Calderon focuses on the next step forward, one inch of progress at a time. One day, she’ll look back at how far she’s come.

“Ultimately, I want to be able to say that medicine is a little bit better off because people like me and my colleagues have invested ourselves in doing this work.”