She served as the national president of the American Medical Student Association for one year prior to completing her residency at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dr. Hughes has volunteered in a federally qualified health center through AmeriCorps, worked at Iowa Senator Tom Harkin's office in Washington, DC, and studied medicine and health systems in Brazil, Sweden, Tanzania, and Botswana. She has been a visiting scholar at the Robert Graham Center and at ABC News Medical Unit in New York City.