Meet Julia Cazabon: First to Attend Medical School for Free on the LSU Health New Orleans Beer Scholarship
October 15, 2024
Julia Cazabon (second from left) was raised by parents Pedro and Tiffany Cazabon (right) alongside two brothers, Jack (left) and George (second from right). Her younger brother George is majoring in biology at LSU in Baton Rouge hoping to follow in his dad’s—and now also his sister’s—footsteps to be a medical doctor. He plans on applying to medical school at LSU Health New Orleans in 2027.
Julia Cazabon, a medical student at LSU Health New Orleans from River Ridge, Louisiana, is the first to receive full support through the Marcia and Billy Beer Endowed Scholarship Fund to attend all four years of medical school for free, thanks to a historic $7.5 million leadership gift—the largest ever to the LSU Health New Orleans Foundation.
“As the weeks go by, I’ve come to realize my scholarship is not a reward—it’s an invitation to aim higher and do more and try to earn it every day,” Cazabon said. “It has made me a much better student, more fiercely committed to excelling and helping others.”
It was Cazabon’s dedication to service that made her scholarship application stand out. For many years, she has worked as a volunteer for the New Orleans Women & Children’s Shelter, helping homeless families. She’s now on the executive board of LSU’s outreach operation to the shelter.
“In high school, I went twice a week after school and learned how this city is not all beautiful, but every person can have a real impact,” said Cazabon, who plans on specializing in obstetrics and gynecology to support and advocate for women’s health.
Dawn Bradley-Fletcher
“Despite all the time and commitment it takes to be a medical student, Julia continues to volunteer and give her all for the New Orleans Women & Children’s Shelter,” said Dawn Bradley-Fletcher, chief executive officer of the shelter. “Thanks to LSU Health New Orleans and the Beer scholarship, she is going to be an amazing doctor because she truly loves caring for people.”
Cazabon learned the value of service at home. Growing up in a large Cuban family just outside New Orleans, she watched her dad, a family medicine physician who earned his medical degree at LSU Health Shreveport, come home from serving his Ochsner primary care patients to soon be checking on members of the New Orleans Cuban community after-hours.
Raised “family style,” Julia Cazabon had parents who “pushed me with so much love, always there to support and forgive.” But right before going to medical school at LSU Health New Orleans, her father Pedro, a physician, died of complications from a massive heart attack. She wrote about it in her scholarship application essay: “I saw incredible feats of science save my father and then I learned that, in the end, we still lose great fights.”
“My dad was the on-call physician to the Cuban elderly population in New Orleans,” Cazabon said. “They would call him at all hours, no shame, ‘Pedro, my toe hurts.’ And he would help them. He was a doctor from the minute he woke up to the minute he went to sleep.”
Cazabon speaks in the past tense because her dad suffered a massive heart attack in October 2022.
“That experience, right before I was to go to medical school, I wasn’t sure I could do it,” Cazabon said. “The timing was so bizarre. I had just applied to LSU, and it was my dad who was pushing me to do early decision, so I would have the best chance at scholarships and getting into medical school.”
She spent the next two months by her dad’s side in the hospital before he passed away on New Year’s Day 2023.
“It gave me an entirely new perspective on medicine—what it really ends up being about,” Cazabon said. “The patient and family experience can be very different from what doctors see, and not always good, and finding the value in that was hard. But getting this big dose of reality right before medical school, it made me want to be a physician who understands people’s suffering and pain.”
For Cazabon and her dad, there was no better choice than LSU.
“I always felt the LSU physicians were like my neighbors, like people I’d met before, even if I hadn’t,” Cazabon said. “Our culture is so pervasive and there’s no place I’d rather study medicine than at LSU Health New Orleans.”
Billy Beer was just 25 when he arrived, sick with polio, at New Orleans’ Charity Hospital. He was placed in an iron lung—supposedly found in the basement—and cared for by LSU doctors and nurses. Eventually, Beer and his wife Marcia established the Marcia and Billy Beer Endowed Scholarship Fund to pay his care forward. Through full-ride scholarships, the Beers’ legacy is now helping students who otherwise couldn’t afford four years of medical school get a medical degree at LSU Health New Orleans.
Learn MORE ABOUT THE BEER SCHOLARSHIP
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