Providing medical care is important, but so is ensuring access

Morgan Byers grew up in Commerce, Georgia, a community of about 8,200 residents, where she saw how limited access to medical care can be. She was particularly interested in the disproportionately high maternal mortality rate in the South.

“The South has the worst maternal mortality rates in the country, which is due to a complicated recipe of racial and gender discrimination, socioeconomic inequity, and limited access to reproductive health care,” said Byers ’26. “It absolutely breaks my heart that as medicine advances, these regions and women are entirely left behind, coping with the same maternal mortality rate in 2025 that was present in Massachusetts in the 1970s.”

That perspective inspired the Pforzheimer resident’s desire to become a doctor and led her to pursue an interdisciplinary approach to her studies.

“I eventually decided to study human developmental and regenerative biology out of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, which is super research-heavy. I paired that with government, so that I can study medicine, research, and then access,” the double concentrator said.

Harvard proved to be “a transformative experience” that allowed her to “study absolutely everything,” she said. The summer after her first year, Byers headed to Portugal through the Office of International Education to study with its country’s doctors.

“I was fascinated by Portugal’s universal health care system after learning about it in a health care economics class,” Byers shared. “That summer, I woke up every day and studied a different specialty, being enthralled by the medical knowledge I was picking up. But I was even more fascinated by the health care system and how policy directly impacts medical practice.”

Beyond academics, Byers works as an EMT with Crimson EMS and conducts research at the Breault Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital. At the lab, Byers works on intestinal organoids and enteroendocrine cells under the supervision of Daniel Zeve, an endocrinologist and lecturer on pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

She also works as a campus tour guide and mentors Boston high school students through the Emerging Leaders Program at Radcliffe Institute.

Although she has taken full advantage of her time at the College, Byers said she wasn’t always sure she would be able to attend. “Nobody in my family had ever gone to college before,” she said. Her mother works as an administrative assistant at a high school, and her father works in equipment management.

She added: “I definitely did not think Harvard was an option for me. I honestly didn’t want to get myself excited about that possibility and it just to be ripped away.”

Even after she was accepted, Byers said her family remained concerned about covering costs. “It’s truly the biggest blessing in the world,” she said. “I was worried that I was going to have to say no because of money, but because of significant tuition assistance that was not the case.”

Her mom, Mandy Byers, added: “If it was not for Harvard’s financial aid program and all the wonderful people at the admissions office that we talked to in the beginning, I don’t know that it would have been an option for her.”

The 21-year-old wants to attend medical school in the South, where she hopes to make an impact on health care access. Several of her Harvard courses have highlighted for her the importance of implementation science, or the study of methods to promote evidence-based practices into public health care.

“I dreamed of being a bridge between the resource epicenters of the world, like Harvard, and the places so desperately in need of that research,” she said. “Those places were small towns all over the South, just like the tiny ones that I come from. My ultimate goal is to focus on bringing access to individuals in rural medical deserts to curb preventable disease.”

“Morgan has more ambition and drive than most adults,” her mother said. “She wants to help people, and I really can’t see her doing anything else. Even if medicine doesn’t work out, it’s going to be serving people in some capacity.”

Byers acknowledged that some students come to college with a clear idea of their path through higher education and beyond. “I’ve tried very consciously to not make it like that at all,” she said. “I’ve tried to be very grateful of the fact that I get to pave my own way at every turn.”