Changemaker: Julianna Montoya advocates for better access to health care
After witnessing her family’s challenges, this student decided to be an agent for change in her community.
Editor’s note: Throughout the year, RED’s Changemakers series will feature students, faculty, staff and alumni who are trailblazers for Colorado’s success and active citizens paying it forward in their communities. Are you (or is someone you know) a changemaker? Share your story.
Julianna Montoya has experienced the best and worst of Colorado’s health care system.
In 2016, her maternal grandfather fell from a 12-foot ladder and was taken via Flight for Life Colorado to Denver Health Medical Center. He wasn’t expected to survive but did. Recently, he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and is receiving treatment, taking advantage of his excellent insurance and provider care.
Conversely, after Montoya’s aunt developed liver cancer, what began as a treatable condition progressed without her having access to insurance, primary care or diagnostic testing. She died in 2017.
“This can’t be the standard, where patients don’t have reliable access to or avoid health care,” Montoya said. “And those that do risk not being taken seriously because our systems are so overwhelmed or inequitable.”
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Montoya has made it her mission to vanquish disparities in health care such as those that have affected her family. And the student at Metropolitan State University of Denver has found a partner in that cause with the University’s Health Institute. The institute, a nexus of 10 academic departments and student-centered workforce partnerships, was founded on a commitment to address the social determinants of equity gaps in health care. More than 60% of those enrolled in the institute this past fall were students of color, an enrollment trend that should help more than 4,100 health care workers of color enter the Colorado workforce by 2030.
Montoya, a double major in Public Health and Biology, knew she was on the right path from the moment she took her first class with Erin Seedorf, Dr.PH, assistant professor in the Department of Health Professions. And connecting with numerous Health Institute programs further solidified her resolve. As a Healthcare Interest Program participant, Montoya shadowed practitioners at Denver Health’s Sam Sandos Westside Family Health Center on Federal Boulevard.
“It was striking — all of the patients looked like me,” Montoya said. “Even more so, I overheard moms telling their daughters, ‘You see her? That could be you someday.’
“To be able to be in that space and help others see they belong — I’m just overwhelmed with gratitude.”
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Today, Montoya is a peer health educator at Girls Athletic Leadership Schools Denver, where she helps connect students to mental health and sexual wellness resources, as well as a Bank of America scholar, focused on addressing health access and equity in Latinx communities. She also works at the Health Center at Auraria as a certified medical assistant and will help support the Colorado Access Health Career Pipeline program.
It’s a lot for a student to balance. But with her sights set on grad school and becoming a physician assistant, Montoya remains steadfast in her commitment as a health equity Changemaker.
“Public health connects us all — I love it,” Montoya said. “And I never forget that we’re sending patients back to their families to tell the stories shaping their experiences with health care.”
