An Experience with Inquiry

Isabella Roque was born in Utah to Brazilian parents while her dad was studying at BYU. She has lived in New York (which she loved), Brazil, and even Spain for a while. Isabella started studying at BYU when she was 17. She is a neuroscience major and a pre-med student at BYU, and healthcare fascinates her. “My plan is to go to medical school, and my ultimate goal would be to get into neurosurgery,” she said. So, when she planned to create her Honors Leadership Development Experience (LDE), Isabella wanted to focus on providing healthcare resources to people in Latin America.

“One thing that was very important for me was that [my LDE] was involved with healthcare in Latin America,” she said. This was “because of my parents being Latin American immigrants coming to the United States and having a very difficult few years.” Later, Isabella served a church mission in Florida and saw many Latin American immigrants having similar experiences. She said that seeing the struggles that people face in Latin American communities—both in the United States and in Latin America itself—drove her to want to develop a project to help.

Skills of Inquiry: Who Needs Help?
Isabella decided to start her project by asking focus questions. “The very origin of the project was inquiring what the need was and then being able to develop something that would actually be helpful,” she said. Isabella was in Brazil during spring term, so she met with the mayor and secretary of health in Agudos do Sul, Brazil. After they talked through several problems, the mayor emphasized the lack of resources for those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). “There are so many children with autism that they have huge waiting lists,” she said. “They're not able to access the resources and the treatment that they need.”

Isabella’s process didn’t stop there, though. After her questions led her to choose a project topic, she kept asking more questions to discover the best path forward. “I started contacting a bunch of different professors, basically anyone I could email that was involved with autism research,” she said. When she returned to BYU after spring term, one professor gave her the idea to put together an online training event. “She had done a few online training events related to autism in different countries,” Isabella said.

She also got some direction and inspiration from a woman who was running a similar project in another part of Brazil. “My father was watching the news, and this woman from Rio de Janeiro had developed a whole NGO for her child who had autism. She had done it in the slums of Rio de Janeiro,” said Isabella. “I found her on Facebook…and I was able to have a wonderful conversation with her over the phone where she gave me a bunch of ideas. And she was super interested in my project!”

The Project: What Can I Do to Help?
Isabella continued to meet with others connected with ASD—from the parents of diagnosed children to many more professors—continually asking how she could best address their needs., Isabella was instrumental in connecting many people with the resources they needed. “I organized three separate online training events for teachers, for parents, and for healthcare professionals involved with children with autism spectrum disorder. They could have these online trainings and then have a Q&A session at the end with these experts on autism.”

Isabella said that while the online training events couldn’t solve all the problems with lack of resources for those with ASD, it did help answer people’s questions. “Some of the questions… that people asked and that were addressed during the online training events were: ‘What do I do to help my child or student that has autism with food selectivity? Or ‘how do I help them change their habits?’ ‘How do I help them be able to adjust to different environments?' Because those tend to be some of the harder questions.”

Isabella talked about how difficult it is for parents who can’t access resources for their children with ASD, saying, “I want people to know how hard it is.” Isabella remembers listening to a mom whose daughter would come home and say, “Mom, I can't read like the other kids can and I feel so stupid.” Her mother couldn’t get access to the academic resources her daughter needed because the wait list was so long. It was heartbreaking for Isabella to hear. People are doing their best, she said, and there is the “importance of extending mercy and extending patience with people that might have these difficulties or deficits…. Just include them and make them feel like these are things that make them unique and special and not unwanted.”

Takeaways: How Can I Keep Helping?
Isabella also had many positive, encouraging experiences as she worked with people—she was especially excited by how passionate they were. “I was surprised by how passionate people were…about caring for individuals with autism spectrum disorder…that gave me a lot of hope.” Isabella is optimistic about the future of ASD with expanding resources, early intervention treatment, inclusion, and social awareness. She said that for her, developing good skills of inquiry and leadership were “not only about getting answers to your questions, it's about meeting people that are so passionate about it, that you start getting even more passionate about it too.”

Nor is Isabella finished with her work with ASD in Brazil. “Throughout this process, I was able to get to know this one community called ECHO Autism. It's a global online community with hubs of specialists on autism…. They don’t have a hub yet in Brazil. So right now, what I'm most excited about is potentially being able to coordinate with a few of the people in medical facilities that were most involved with online training events, and see if they are willing to establish an ECHO autism hub in Brazil!” She is excited to continue the work she started during her Honors LDE.

Isabella said that the Honors program gave her the opportunity to ask questions and the critical thinking skills needed to find answers. “That's what I love about the Honors Program,” she said. “It gives you the exact opportunities that you need to ask important questions to develop.” She appreciates “the process of being forced to think about things at a much deeper level and being able to come up with your own questions.” From start to finish, Isabella has put those skills to work to create a truly meaningful project.