GALVESTON, Texas - Anand Bhat, a third-year medical student at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, is the 2008 winner of the Hector P. Garcia M.D. Cultural Competency Essay Competition.
Carla Kantara, a student in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, received the second place award and Margaret Wardlaw, an M.D.-Ph.D. student, received third place. The competition was open to students in all four UTMB schools.
An awards ceremony was planned for Sept. 29 but it was cancelled as a result of Hurricane Ike.
The essay competition is held annually in honor of Dr. Hector P. Garcia, a 1940 graduate of UTMB. Garcia was a champion of civil rights and equal access to health care for all Texans. He was the first Mexican-American to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award offered by the United States.
Here is an excerpt from Bhat's winning essay: "The America of tomorrow and the Texas of today can ill-afford to ignore cross-cultural competence in any field. In 2004, Texas became one of the few majority-minority states in the United States. It will take decades for the rest of America to become as diverse as Texas is now."
For more information about Garcia, visit http://www.utmb.edu/drgarcia/.