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USC Price student wins health communication scholarship

Nina Nguyen, a Master of Health Administration student, researched hospital financial products and medical debt policies.

Nina Nguyen stands in front of a sign with the word "GROW" at a KPMG conference.

Nina Nguyen, a USC student working to help people with medical debt, has won the Fawn Lopez Health Advocacy Communication Excellence Award.

The award, from the Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education, comes with a $3,000 scholarship and an invitation to this year’s American College of Healthcare Executives Congress in Chicago, where Nguyen can network with healthcare leaders.

Nguyen, a Master of Health Administration student at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy,  has worked to tackle the issue of medical debt, a growing problem in the U.S. with an estimated 20 million Americans owing $220 billion in medical debt – an average of $11,000 per person.

Faculty member lecturing in a Master of Health Administration course.

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She interned for the Los Angeles County Department of Health’s consumer protection team, tracking medical debt relief legislation across the U.S. and advising the county’s Board of Supervisors. The board ultimately passed a motion to explore purchasing – and forgiving – medical debt for residents. 

Nguyen, who also studies global health at the USC Keck School of Medicine, later researched hospitals’ medical payment products for a study while working at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics

“My experience, combined with my work and my research, pushes me to continue to advocate for better billing practices and more transparency and financial assistance,” Nguyen said.

Researching hospital financial products 

The Fawn Lopez communication scholarship is a fitting award for Nguyen, who excels at communicating people’s personal experiences and the complex realm of healthcare consumer finance.

“A skill that I really value and one that Nina has is an ability to talk to regular people and understand complicated ideas,” said Erin Duffy, director of research training at the Schaeffer Center. “If you can understand and talk to regular people about their life experiences, and also communicate with decision makers and policy makers, that’s a real asset. Nina definitely brought that to our team.”

“My experience, combined with my work and my research, pushes me to continue to advocate for better billing practices and more transparency and financial assistance.”

Nina Nguyen

Nguyen assisted Duffy for a paper reviewing hospital websites to see which financing options are available for consumers, as well as a secret shopper project in which she called hospitals to simulate the patient experience of obtaining prices for elective procedures. 

“Nina was very good at contextualizing what we were learning from the phone calls and synthesizing across multiple points of information to get a clearer picture of what the landscape looks like,” Duffy said. 

Price student is passionate about public health

Even before her interest in medical debt and health care consumer protection, Nguyen was keenly interested in public health. When COVID-19 vaccines became available, for example, she knocked on doors in her Vietnamese community in San Jose to persuade them to get the shots. 

“No matter where I am in my career, I always find time to work with my community because I feel that really grounds me,” Nguyen said.

Norris Gunby, an associate professor at the USC Price School, said he’s had thousands of students in his 20 years of teaching, and he always offers to talk to students about their future ambitions. Nguyen was one of the few who accepted his invitation, he said.

“I’ve gotten to know her and consider her to be one of my most promising students,” Gunby said. “Her combination of intellect, personality and desire for success will lead her to many accolades and she will be an outstanding representative of USC.”