October 2025 Advocacy Champion

Elizabeth Breitbach

Third-Year Medical Student
University of Minnesota Medical School

Why is being an advocate so important to you?
My introduction to advocacy was during my time spent living in Duluth’s Central Hillside while working as a Community Transformation intern for the First Ladies of the Hillside, a group of women healing their community through various initiatives - from a social enterprise delivering healthy meals, to low-income families residing in food deserts, to introducing children who struggled in a traditional academic setting, to engaging STEM activities such as food engineering in UMD’s chocolate lab. I fell in love with grassroots advocacy through the community I found in Central Hillside. The women and children I built relationships with lacked affordable and accessible food, housing, and healthcare, but they found healing through music, art, and the power of making food and breaking bread with others. To me, advocating for food justice and health equity is fundamentally intertwined with being a medical provider.

What health-care related issue have you advocated for over the past year?
The majority of my advocacy work is dedicated to serving underserved communities, especially those experiencing homelessness, and addressing barriers to health and well-being. Over the past few years, I have been involved in starting a student-led Street Medicine Initiative on the Twin Cities and Duluth medical school campuses. We have had the privilege to build relationships with organizations and providers who do incredible work in our community and find places for medical students to connect services or fill in care gaps. We have been able to partner with these groups to help with street medicine outreach, including wound care, foot care, blood pressure and A1c checks, STI testing and treatment, and distributing food and winter supplies. We are also developing an elective that we hope to bring to the medical school curriculum. 

What advice would you offer to others who are interested in advocacy? 
Just start! It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with all of the issues impacting our communities, but advocacy doesn’t always need to happen on a large scale. Small actions can make a big difference in someone’s life. The power of connection is wildly underestimated.