Alumna Doctor Helps Her Community Against Overwhelming Odds

Cristina Gonzalez/Entertainment Director 

In a time of uncertainty, Dr. Natalia Echeverri, gynecologist and obstetrician, is spending almost every hour of the day ensuring her community she is there to help.

For Echeverri’s patients, that means delivering babies even when she’s not on call and making sure they have a hand to hold during labor. Something that expectant mothers worried wouldn’t be possible after private hospitals in New York temporarily barred partners from entering delivery rooms. 

“Taking a partner away from a laboring patient, whether it be their mother, their sister or spouse, it’s a very emotional experience,” said Echeverri.

To compromise, partners in Florida are allowed during delivery as long as they’re wearing a mask and remain inside the hospital until the patient is discharged, something Echeverri and other doctors advocated for.  

When she’s not inside the hospital walls or working at her office in South Miami, the FIU alumni is still working on the front lines- providing COVID-19 testing for Miami’s most vulnerable and neglected populace, the homeless. 

“How can we expect a homeless person to shelter in place if they don’t have a home?,” said Echeverri. “The city is mandating this but they aren’t providing them with the resources that they need. They’re not being provided with masks and they’re not being provided with shelters.”

And because of this, she has teamed up with Dr. Armen Henderson, an internal medicine physician at the University of Miami Health System.

Henderson, who advises the Dade County Stress Response, a disaster relief team, and is a founder of Dream Defender’s, a civil rights organization, activated the group after seeing a lack of response from the city. 

Echeverri volunteers with the group in Miami’s Overtown neighborhood, an area where the homeless population is most prevalent.

With a service site set up in the St. John Institutional Missionary Baptist Church parking lot, the group distributes tents, masks, hygiene products and provides porta potties and showers on a weekly basis. 

“It is not our responsibility to be doing what we’re doing, it’s the city’s,” said Echeverri. “We do it because we care and because we understand that there is a need and we will not let anybody fall behind.” 

Volunteers at the site also drive anyone who tests positive or is symptomatic to Jackson Memorial, the hospital where Echeverri pursued her residency training after graduating from the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine at FIU in 2015. 

Providing relief during a crisis is something Echeverri is no stranger to. 

“I’ve always been involved in relief missions, both in Guatemala and Haiti. I went to Haiti 3 times; the first time was days after the earthquake in 2010,” she said.

It’s the connections she made during those mission trips that have helped her receive donations, such as those N95 masks healthcare workers desperately need. 

“I got a shipment of 2000 yesterday and what I’ve been doing with those boxes is reaching out to healthcare providers that have their offices here in Gables, Pinecrest and Miami asking them if they have masks,” said Echeverri. “And the answer I’m getting most is ‘I have one mask which I’m disinfecting every night’.”

With that shipment alone she’s been able to distribute N95’s to Jackson Memorial’s anesthesia team, pediatrician offices in Pinecrest  and even supplied a few hundred masks to FIU’s drive-thru COVID-19 testing site, which she also volunteers at. 

With help from other physicians, non profit organizations and the generocity of strangers, Echeverri is able to replenish items at the Overtown service site daily.

The mother of two often stays up until midnight, spending almost every night with her husband sorting through boxes of food, water and clothing so they could be delivered to Overtown the next day. 

“My house has become a drop off point for donations coming in,” she said. “I’m in a privileged position that gives me access to people who are willing to give. I’m just here as a liaison to supply to people who need it.”

Echeverri realized that it wasn’t just healthcare professionals and the homeless who needed her assistance, all community members were in need of one thing: masks. 

“We’re asking people not to buy medical grade masks because the healthcare professionals need them but then we’re telling people that they need to wear masks if they need to leave the house,” she said. “So, where are people that work at gas stations, pharmacies, grocery stores supposed to get these masks?”

Echeverri and a coworker began making handmade masks out of cotton cloth and elastics, right from their homes.

What started as a few masks for her patients and their partners turned into hundreds of masks being sewed weekly for anyone who needed one. 

For Echeverri all the work she does is driven by one thing: community and that’s the message she wants to send to the public as we continue to adapt to a new normal. 

“I do what I do not because of anything else except that we are a community and we need to help each other,” Echeverri said, “If you know someone who’s struggling, lend a hand.”

Have a story? Think we should look into something? Know a person or club that has a story worth telling? Let us know. You can remain anonymous. Email editor@fiusm.com