Alyssa Chavis-Wanson

Public Policy & Psychology

My name is Alyssa Chavis-Wanson. I am from Hope Mills, NC and an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. I am interested in majoring in Public Policy and Psychology on the pre-med track. At Duke, I’m involved in the Native American/Indigenous Student Alliance (NAISA), Duke OnTap and Planned Parenthood. As an aspiring physician pursuing Internal Medicine, I am interested in the paradigm shift from the biomedical to the biopsychosocial model. This describes the shift of the biomedical model focus, which is a disease-based approach, to the biopsychosocial model focus, which aims to use a more holistic approach to further promote true healing. The traditional biomedical model focuses on pathology and other biological characteristics of disease. In this model priority is given to diagnosis and treatment. Mental health is not treated as a part of physical disease and instead it is carved out. The biopsychosocial model takes into account the fact that a human person is not only a physical body but has a psychological system and is a part of a social environment. It weighs the importance of social sciences along with natural sciences in the practice of medicine. After attending medical school, I would like to work in a rural area to provide medicine in traditionally underrepresented areas.