Penn Medical School graduate's passion spans globe

Of the 154 men and women who graduated Sunday from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, one had journeyed particularly far to get her degree.

Aura Obando covered 7,700 miles from Teule Hospital in Muheza, Tanzania, in three days to join her classmates for a ceremony at the Kimmel Center.

Obando, 29, a Colombian native who grew up in West Hartford, Conn., is passionate about practicing medicine in the developing world.

That passion already has taken her to Africa, Paraguay, Peru - and to the Spanish-speaking immigrant community in South Philadelphia.

In Tanzania, she did a seven-week rotation in obstetrics, gynecology, and AIDS treatment.

To her, the Hippocratic oath is a call to public service.

"It's an official declaration of my commitment to care for others, and not just myself or my career," Obando said.

You could say it's in her blood.

Obando's parents met while serving in a poor rural hospital in Colombia: Her Massachusetts-born mother, Martha, was a Peace Corps nurse, and her Colombian father, Antonio, was a doctor there.

But it took a trip to Paraguay to convince Obando that she wanted to pursue medicine.

"I was initially interested in evolutionary biology," she said. That was before she joined the Peace Corps, which sent her on a two-year assignment to an agrarian community in Paraguay that had been devastated by aggressive logging.

"I also helped with the community's health-care needs, especially when it came to women's health, overall hygiene, sex education, and child care," Obando said.

"All the kids in my village had worms, which prevented their growth and made them chronically sick."

She said the experience had taught her that she would rather spend her life working with people than in the laboratory.

"My priorities completely shifted: I couldn't see myself devoted to a life of research, which is so removed from people. And it also sparked my interest in international health and health care in the third world."

She found kindred souls when she enrolled at Penn in 2006.

"I found great mentors," she said. "People really interested in primary-care medicine and global health."

Those mentors included emergency medicine professor Steve Larson, founder and director of Puentes de Salud, a community medical initiative that provides free health care to the Latino immigrant community in South Philadelphia.

"She's an amazing student, there's no doubt about it," Larson said. "It's been amazing watching her grow and fulfill her vision."

Obando volunteered at Puentes during her first summer vacation.

"Aura and two of her colleagues were instrumental in organizing volunteers from across the university" to join Puentes, Larson said.

In 2007, Obando, who spent last summer studying and working at a hospital in Peru, married Paul Easton, a special-education teacher at Julia de Burgos Elementary School in North Philadelphia.

Easton recently won the Boston College Public Service Scholarship, a full-tuition scholarship to the college's law school. But he's loath to leave behind his job.

"I will definitely find a way to continue working with adolescents in the public school system," he said.

Obando said she and Easton had often talked about working together for a nonprofit or other charitable organization.

For now, she plans to do her residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

And after that?

"I'd love to go back to Africa, but since I'm a Spanish speaker, we'll probably go to Latin America."

Obando doesn't have a lot of time to savor her new M.D.: She has to report to the hospital early next month.