Student Spotlight – Lucas San Miguel ‘25
Lucas San Miguel, Class of 2025 and double major in Economics and Chinese Studies, first learned of EGHI's Student Global Health Photography Contest before heading to Nicaragua in the summer of 2022. Passionate about global development and China's influence in Latin America, Lucas knew he was going to witness "history in the making" when he landed his "dream" U.S. State Department-sponsored internship with Rancho Santana, a tourism conglomerate seeking to bolster community development across southwest Nicaragua.
During the transformational summer, the links between global development and global health took center stage in Lucas’ experiences and photos. He entered the 2022 global health student photography contest and won two of the five winning photos. He repeated his success in 2023 and again in 2024.
"Due to increasingly warm winters, reindeer populations have been wearing down their teeth faster trying to chew through thicker ice layers to get to grass. The thawing and refreezing create thicker, harder ground cover, and the reindeer are dying quicker than ever. The health of our ecosystems is deeply intertwined with human well-being. This photograph serves as a stark reminder of the health consequences of climate change, not only for wildlife but for the Indigenous communities, like the Sami, who depend on these animals for sustenance." Lucas explains his 2024 first-place photo.
Lucas captured this unofficial UK COVID-19 memorial in London. The wall along the River Thames is painted with 236,245 red hearts, each representing a life whose death certificate’s cause of death was COVID-19. "The Queen of Hearts" was a top five entry in the 2024 EGHI student photography contest.
Lucas’ lived experiences shaped his appreciation for photography and the written word as instruments of connection and truth. He draws parallels with his childhood use of visual communication to connect with his father who is deaf. While his father, a successful food chemist, was an exceptional lip reader, Lucas felt that important things that needed to be said and heard must be documented, written, captured, and seen to be fully appreciated.
Lucas understands that his father's access to health and resources helped him excel in the hearing world of corporate America and hopes that efforts to advance health equity continue to reach into every corner of the world. For his part, he will continue his focus on global development understanding health as a key driver of growth and sustained economic gains; and conversely that development must not be at the expense of healthy communities and environments in which they live, work, and play.
Worldwide Watch Party
As Lucas graduates, we thank him for three years of stellar engagement with EGHI's global health programs and all his successes at Emory. We'll continue the watch party as Lucas starts his next chapter in Scotland as a Bobby Jones Scholar working towards his MSc. in Global Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews.