UM-Dearborn junior Noura Alfatlawi took a job as a pharmacy technician in 2019 without any way of anticipating what an intense experience that would be. Shortly after she started, the pandemic hit, and while many people got to experience those early days of COVID in relative safety working from home, essential workers like Alfatlawi carried on. In many ways, it was a stressful and exhausting time. But it was also a satisfying one. At her pharmacy, she was one of the first employees trained in administering COVID vaccines. “I mean, that’s going to be in the history books,” she says. “When I have kids someday, I’m going to be able to tell them I was right there helping people get their first shots during a global pandemic.”
Alfatlawi thinks of herself as a “heartfelt” person, and she’s always wanted to put helping people front and center in her life, especially when it came to a career. Given her experience as a pharmacy tech, she initially thought she’d like to attend pharmacy school, which made a biology major a good choice. But as she took a few steps down that path, she had second thoughts. When she envisioned the day-to-day life of a pharmacist, it started to feel a little “robotic.” “And I just thought maybe I should try getting out of my comfort zone a little, because how else do you know what you’re capable of?” she says. Alfatlawi started researching other majors and landed on public health — a field that was still within the ballpark of her interests and expertise but one that would give her a broader horizon of career options. Eventually, she discovered an interest in healthcare administration, especially the data analytics part of it. As she dug deeper, it also seemed like a path that might let her achieve her dreams of living and working internationally.
But first things first: Alfatlawi wanted to see what working in healthcare administration actually felt like to make sure it was the right choice. So she decided to take a summer internship with United Outstanding Physicians, a physician-managed organization in Dearborn that’s focused on improving patient care through efficiencies in healthcare delivery. Alfatlawi says she thinks of UOP sort of as a “middleman” in the complex web that is U.S. healthcare, occupying a space somewhere between patients’ insurance companies and their doctors. For example, during her internship, she worked on a physician incentive program that was aimed at ensuring babies were getting their vaccinations on time in the first year of life. In another case, she was helping people who had recently lost their Medicaid coverage — often through administrative technicalities — restore their insurance. She worked on another incentive program that made sure physicians were recommending a less invasive colon cancer screening for patients over 45.
Alfatlawi loved the internship. First off, she says it gave her some really good insight into the administrative complexities of the U.S. healthcare landscape and how important data is to the whole system. As someone who is involved in humanitarian relief efforts, particularly in parts of the Middle East, she says it was especially affirming to see how her work directly benefited people. Interestingly, she also discovered she really likes the normalcy of working in an office. “I know a lot of people don’t like office work, but I think it really calmed me down,” she says. “As a pharmacy tech, I work in a field where I’m always on my feet. At the internship, I had my own space, I got my assignments for the day, I’d do the work at my own pace.”
Now feeling good about her major change, Alfatlawi says she pretty much has every course planned out between now and graduation. After that, she’d like to go to grad school, with her top choice being the Master of Health Services Administration program at UM-Ann Arbor. Down the road, the big dream is to work outside the U.S. — specifically, at the Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare center in Saudi Arabia, a joint venture between the Saudi energy company and the Baltimore-based university. Alfatlawi says it might not be her family’s first choice to have her so far from home. “But they’ll get over it,” she says with a smile. “I’m really lucky because my family is very supportive of my ambitions and my sense of adventure.”
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Story by Lou Blouin
