Stories

Civic Science Fellow Donya Ahmadian brings awareness, empathy, and action to racial bias in medical care

Standing on the steps of the United States Capitol Building on an April morning in 2025, Donya Ahmadian took a deep breath and looked around at nearly one hundred medical students gathered in their neat white coats. They had come from all over the United States and the world, united by a common mission to advocate for justice and equity within medical practice.  

For many, including Donya, it was their first time stepping into the world of policy advocacy, approaching elected leaders and their staff to speak explicitly about issues facing their profession, including systemic racism, mental health, burnout, well-being, and health equity. 

As the Doris Duke Racial Equity in Clinical Equations Civic Science Fellow at the American Medical Student Association (AMSA), Donya helped organize meetings and appointments for “Advocacy Day,” and developed resources to help her peers discuss sensitive topics and advocate for change with Congressional staffers. But until that moment on the Capitol steps, it had all felt theoretical. 

Now, it was real. “It was just so empowering,” Donya says. “I’ve always wished to consider myself an advocate, to speak clearly about injustice and inequity. But it can be difficult to find spaces where that’s truly welcomed.”  

Standing at the Capitol, she realized this was what being an advocate means. “It’s an act of honor to the oath we took to do no harm,” she says. “How do we respond when the very system that aims to care for others also holds the power to harm them? We’re all searching for a way to come back to that oath. I think it’s a part of our sacred duty to respond, reignite, and re-center ourselves to this calling. Especially right now.”  

As a Civic Science Fellow, Donya works at the intersection of medical evidence, public engagement, and policy to turn science into action. This approach shaped her journey long before that day in Washington. 

A call to mental health work 

Donya’s path to the Fellowship and a career dedicated to health equity and compassionate care began during her undergraduate years at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. There, she studied neuroscience and quickly found herself drawn to mental health advocacy and fighting the profound stigma often attached to mental illness. 

“Patients grappling with mental illness and mental well-being are amongst the most profoundly moving populations I’ve ever met,” Donya says. “I was drawn to their stories early in my career—the strength it took to sit in the darkness, never knowing when and if the light would return. I wanted to be a part of a larger force working to bring that care and light to them.” 

Around that same time, she became involved with GlobeMed, a student-driven nonprofit organization committed to improving global health equity through community partnerships and education efforts. GlobeMed’s model empowered undergraduates like Donya to directly engage with issues, designing projects focused on concrete outcomes such as clean water access. Unfortunately, the organization shut down in 2023 after 15 years due to cost constraints. 

“GlobeMed completely altered the course of my life,” Donya says. “It showed me that advocacy and medicine were two parts of the same equation. You can’t effectively give care without thinking about justice and community voices. We can’t respond to the needs of our communities without involving them and meeting them exactly where they are.” 

The experience inspired Donya to pursue a master’s degree in public health and begin professional training in the field of behavioral health, emphasizing a holistic, person-centered approach to medical practice. She decided psychiatry could be the space where all her transformative experiences came together. 

Building equitable tools for clinicians 

AMSA is a nonprofit medical membership group that places a strong emphasis on social justice advocacy alongside clinical excellence, providing nuanced training in areas such as reproductive health, LGBTQIA+ care, and racism in medicine. “AMSA fills essential gaps in our medical curriculum,” Donya says. “Members become doctors who don’t just recognize inequities but actively take part in changing them.” 

Her Fellowship project is ambitious yet practical: developing an educational toolkit for medical students interested in health equity. The goal is to help future physicians recognize and address racial bias in clinical formulas and measurements used every day in medical decision-making. 

The toolkit already includes an educational slide deck, real-world case studies, practical advocacy frameworks, and conversation prompts. These resources address issues such as pulse oximeters that can misread blood oxygen levels in people with darker skin, or kidney function equations like eGFR (estimated glomerular filtration rate) that historically have used race adjustments. Calculations like these affect patients’ care in subtle but important ways and, when biased, can cause real harm. 

At the heart of Donya’s project is an ongoing national survey that asks current medical students across the country about racism and structural bias in clinical tools. When initial responses began arriving, Donya was startled by what she found: A number of the medical student respondents openly questioned the need or even validity of examining racial biases in clinical medicine. “While shocking and unsettling at first read, these responses made clear that this work is needed more than ever.”  

Rather than ignoring these dissenting perspectives, Donya decided to amplify the full range of responses, even uncomfortable ones, in discussions within AMSA. She sees the toolkit and the discussion pathways it’s building as opportunities to directly engage with clinicians early in their careers. 

“We are not here to change every person’s perspective,” she says. “But if we can at least invite curiosity, plant a seed for compassion, and make clear that as physicians, our duty isn’t dependent on personal agreement, but on care and dignity—that’s progress.” 

The recognition that compassion and equitable care are ethical obligations, not emotional or ideological choices has shaped Donya’s approach to medicine and advocacy. “Clinical care must transcend personal views, she says. “When you step into that room, you leave preconceptions at the door. You’re there for someone else, for something greater.” 

Ensuring lasting change 

Donya often reflects on what happens next—after her Fellowship ends, after medical students graduate, after toolkits are released. The challenges of systemic change demand constant vigilance and sustained action. 

“My big question now is how we make sure our work isn’t temporary,” she says. “It has to remain impactful beyond the Fellowship and beyond AMSA.” 

The toolkit—shaped directly by medical students’ insights and concerns—is still in active development [Med student? Take the survey here]. It features specific scenarios and conversation prompts designed to prepare students for the uncomfortable yet essential discussions they’ll inevitably face with clinical mentors or peers. For example, “What do we do when we’ve taken an oath to do no harm, yet see harm unfolding right in front of us?”  

Donya emphasizes that the toolkit must be grounded firmly in reality, including resistance and difficult emotions. “That means openly acknowledging skepticism and pushback and preparing ourselves to meet it with dialogue instead of defensiveness.”  

Her hope is that, by engaging honestly and inclusively with medical students from diverse perspectives, the resulting toolkit will equip future clinicians with the understanding, courage, empathy, and advocacy skills they’ll need throughout their careers.  

Strength in fellowship 

For Donya, the sense of community among the Civic Science Fellows is energizing, especially in a field that can sometimes feel isolating. “It’s been so refreshing to be in a space with compassionate, civic-minded people from all different tracks. We come together weekly and discuss issues from a hundred different lenses. It’s just so unique and empowering,” she says.  

In particular, she found attending the in-person Boston cohort gathering an inspiring experience. “To be surrounded by that type of energy, by passionate people from so many fields, was something I was not used to experiencing as a medical student.” 

Now is a critical time for equity-minded people to engage, support, and stand up courageously for justice in clinical care, Donya says. And she sees AMSA and the Civic Science Fellowship as part of that movement. 

“Right now, there’s an urgent need for bold advocacy. But it needs to be advocacy rooted in compassionate care, rooted in empathy as well as evidence,” she says. 

Taking on the role of advocate can be frightening at times, Donya says. This motivates her work to create a community at AMSA that can be a support and a safe harbor for students. AMSA recently launched Code Blue, an educational and community-advocacy movement aimed at supporting students in this work. 

“I can’t think of anything we need more than that,” she says. 

Donya is a member of the 2024-25 Civic Science Fellows cohort. Her Fellowship is supported by the Doris Duke Foundation.