Diego Galan

Diego was born and raised in Pamplona, in Northern Spain close to the French border. After finishing his first year of medical school at the Universidad de Navarra, at the age of 19, he moved to the United States to pursue a more well-rounded education. He attended Middlebury College, where he graduated in 2014 with a major in Molecular Biology and a minor in Music. He then worked as a research assistant in a basic science lab for two years at Boston Children’s Hospital and Middlebury College. While in New England, he worked as a Spanish medical interpreter in a free clinic in rural Vermont for Hispanic populations working on local farms, which allowed him to see some of the challenges migrant populations face in accessing healthcare in the US. In 2016, he moved to North Carolina to attend Duke University School of Medicine. While at Duke, he spent his dedicated research time in Singapore carrying out leptospirosis research in rural Borneo. After his year in Singapore, he went on to pursue a Master’s degree in Epidemiology at the University of Cambridge in England, to further grow as an independent investigator and apply these skills to patient care. These research experiences and his clinical rotations at the North Carolina state psychiatric hospital ignited his interest in psychiatry, community medicine, and healthcare disparities. At Yale, he looks forward to learning more about health equity and social justice, and getting involved in epidemiology research to investigate health disparities at the intersection of Hispanic and LGBTQ+ communities. Outside of work, Diego enjoys running, hosting dinner at his house (with his housemate, Taco the cat), and traveling.