LaDanielle McNeil has lived in a medically underserved community, tried to secure medical care as an immigrant and juggled full-time responsibilities at home and on the job.
Now, with her degree in public health from ACPHS, she’s ready to use that experience to inform her future work in nursing and help improve access to care.
“I’m so passionate about going into nursing,” she said. “And I want to go somewhere where they need more medical staff like where I grew up.”
McNeil grew up in a rural environment in Jamaica. “It’s a health desert,” she said about her home. “The nearest hospital was about two hours away, the closest pharmacy was maybe about one hour away.”
Growing up, she relied on the voluntary work of medical professionals who would come to her town to provide services to the community.
“There was a local clinic where doctors would come on their day off to volunteer their services,” she said. “That's how I got my medical care.”
After completing high school in Jamaica, she immigrated to New York City, where she had more access to education and financial assistance. While the access was a benefit, the culture shock was not. The city was a stark contrast to the area she was used to, which was sparsely populated and dense with foliage. In New York, houses were on top of each other, cars were everywhere and it was noisy.
“There was very much culture shock for me coming to the U.S.,” she said. The first thing she did was call her mom back in Jamaica, telling her she wanted to return. “The first time I got to the city, I cried. I wanted to go back home instantly.”
She has a different perspective now.
“I have to say it was rewarding because I got to go to college and I had a lot of opportunities that I wouldn't have been able to get in Jamaica,” she said. “So I'm very grateful.”
She spent two years at the Kurt Hahn Expeditionary Learning School in Brooklyn, receiving her diploma and becoming a New York State resident. With that latter accomplishment, she gained access to health insurance and other services.
On the advice of teachers and school counselors, she applied to a school in central New York and attended for one year. It wasn’t her place.
“The community wasn’t the right fit for me,” she said. “I was trying to pursue nursing at the time, and it wasn’t really going well. Then I had a change of heart, and I learned about the physician assistant profession. A Google search led me to ACPHS,” she said with a laugh.
She attended Accepted Students Day and met the public health program director, Dr. Wendy Parker. She immediately got a sense of the close-knit community at ACPHS.
“It was the first time I’ve ever had the opportunity to meet the director of the program that I’m in, who also served as my advisor,” she said. “I could reach out to her for anything at any time.”
McNeil said the students were welcoming and she had close relationships with professors, which she loved. Her passion for public health went beyond the classroom as she completed work in the women’s health sphere, specifically research in maternity and reproductive justice. Much of her work was done under the guidance of Dr. Parker and the team at The Collaboratory, the public health clinic operated by ACPHS and Trinity Health Alliance in Albany’s medically underserved South End. McNeil was particularly interested in postpartum depression and access to doulas.
After Roe v. Wade’s overturn and the subsequent uncertainty surrounding women’s reproductive health, McNeil focused her capstone project on accessible birth control on college campuses. She took the research beyond the classroom, petitioning for forms of birth control other than condoms to be made available on the ACPHS campus with the help of other students and the New York Birth Control Access Project (NYBCAP). Their petition garnered over 400 signatures.
While no data suggests ACPHS has concerning rates of unintended pregnancies among students, McNeil wanted better access to birth control to break barriers, taking into consideration that some students lack their own transportation, cannot afford contraception or sense a stigma around purchasing items like emergency birth control (such as Plan B).
“I heard stories from students who were willing to share with me that they had issues accessing their birth control at a local pharmacy for years and that they felt shame,” she said. “Especially because we’re a pharmacy school and a lot of our students actually work in pharmacies.”
McNeil’s research and activism on behalf of others were examples of her strong passion for taking care of those in need. On top of juggling coursework, research and volunteering at the Capital City Rescue Mission clinic, McNeil headed her household in Albany, where she lived with her grandmother and two cousins.
“I’ve been doing a lot for my grandma, like taking her to her appointments. She’s diabetic. She has issues like cataracts and glaucoma,” she said. “I’ve been really hands on in her care, I make all her appointments.”
She also takes care of her cousins— taking her younger cousin to and from school and driving her older cousin places due to her myoclonic epilepsy, which causes seizures.
The responsibility of being her family member’s caretaker impacted her educational experience at ACPHS, pulling her away from school events, classes and work.
“It was a bit hard and there were a couple of times where I broke down with Dr. Parker,” she said. But her experience providing care to the ones she loves deepened her desire to pursue further education in healthcare beyond ACPHS. “The hands-on practical care that I’ve provided for my grandma has inspired me to do this as a lifelong career.”
After graduating in December, McNeil began work as a maternity patient care technician at St. Peter’s Hospital, gaining more experience before she embarks on an accelerated four-year graduate nursing program at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School.
“I’m super happy and honored,” she said.
McNeil’s goal is to become a family nurse practitioner. She believes it’s her turn to help close the gap in health care, making it more accessible to rural and underserved communities.