I am a student at Harvard Medical School, and a writer. Most of my recent writing has been as a commentator for National Public Radio's All Things Considered.

I grew up in Sacramento, California. I studied anthropology and film at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In San Francisco, where I lived from 1991 to 2001, I worked as a community organizer for an HIV prevention group and then as a community educator for an HIV prevention research group. After deciding to become a physician, I took basic science courses at San Francisco State University, and then worked for a year in an immunology laboratory of the National Institutes of Health while applying to medical schools. During the summer of 2003, I worked with the Treatment Action Campaign, an AIDS activist group in South Africa. I am now deeply immersed in my clinical training and sometimes find it difficult to keep up with my correspondence; nonetheless, you can reach me at: joseph_wright@student.hms.harvard.edu