Marissa Paz, BS

University of Arizona
Medicine | Doctoral Candidate
AADMD/MedCats Student Leader

I am a medical student studying at University of Arizona College of Medicine Tucson Campus. I am Tucson native. I am Tewa, Canadian and Mexican. I am hard of hearing and utilize hearing aids in my every day life and grew up in a family with a dominant genetic hearing loss. I am passionate about advocating for people of disabilities because of my own experiences as a person with a disability, as well as many experiences with people in my community. I grew up engaging people with many different types of disabilities and learned to appreciate the complexities and personalities of those who have them. I strive to educate current and future physicians on how to interact with people with disabilities regardless of the type and how to make their practices friendly to people with disabilities. The fixes are not drastic, but they can drastically change the future health of the people we are doing this for. I hope that through our work we can help improve the lives of many patients.