Brian Vu MD’28 ScM’28 traces his interest in medicine back to a simple idea: patients need advocates. As a Vietnamese American, he is determined to stand up for and connect with the communities that raised him.

That commitment brought him and some classmates to volunteer at Providence’s Center for Southeast Asians during their first year at The Warren Alpert Medical School. They organized well-received events like blood pressure screenings at the center, which is on Elmwood Avenue.

Some patients had very high blood pressure, and the medical students suggested interventions such as eating less salt. But when they encouraged patients to follow up with physicians or begin prescribed medications, many said they lacked access to both.

“Understanding what bars these older adults from accessing specific points of care really supplements how I’m approaching my patients as a clinical student,” Vu says.

At one of the team’s service events, Vu met Luz Filpo, the director of outreach for Meals on Wheels of Rhode Island. “She was very enthusiastic about us being there, as students,” Vu says. “It turned out that there hadn’t been a prior partnership between [the Medical School] and Meals on Wheels, and that was kind of where everything started.”

With Filpo’s support, Med Wheels was born—an initiative for medical students to join Meals on Wheels to share guidelines and create events to improve the mental, social, and physical health of older adults in Providence. Vu describes the mission of Med Wheels as “preemptively understanding barriers to care [for older adults in our community] and implementing that knowledge into how we approach patient care in the clinic.” It’s now a formal medical student club co-led by Julie Gawenda MD’29, Chris Nguyen ’25 MD’29, and others.

Nguyen spent much of his childhood in California with his grandfather, whose low-income apartment community was home to many immigrant families. games with the seniors. We also asked what they thought of our fall prevention workshop, what they wanted to see, and what they were interested in learning about that we as medical students can then provide,” Gawenda says.

Other Med Wheels events take place at Fox Point Manor, a Providence retirement home. Students produced a presentation and brochures with questions that seniors could choose to ask their doctor. Nguyen says these activities are meant to “make the barrier to seeing a physician on a regular basis a little lower.”

Med Wheels students can go anywhere with Meals on Wheels. Vu says they want to combat social isolation by spending time with older adults, but the work they do also lays the foundation for long-term, supportive relationships.

“The programming that we’re doing in Med Wheels boils down to a very dilute version of primary care and preventative health,” Vu says. The values of the organization, of service without borders, define the kind of physicians these students hope to become.