It’ s a very, very interesting kind of dynamic. You being at Kedren and having that experience with Africana Studies is part of the same cultural mindset.
You are the first person who I think has gotten it before I said it, when I say being at Kedren is like coming full circle from being at home and being at Drew. I come from a working-class family. My father was a truck driver for the post office and my mother was a secretary. Growing up, with childhood eyes, I noticed the difference between access to health care, depending on what side of the tracks you were on, That was typically what defined towns in terms of segregation on Long Island, the tracks. And so that was that I guess was the burning flame. That’ s a big part of my childhood. It was very interesting. Wyndanch was known as Little Brooklyn because of the poor outcome measures in terms of health and education and violence.
It was number one, I believe, for HIV contraction in that area, and known for a lot of violence. But I had a wonderful experience in my middle school, junior high school, and high school years. Because of the teachers there, who identified kids who were excelling, We had this program called Project for Success. They liked to introduce us to a cultural experience that we would never have gotten without their support financially, as well as the educational exposure. We learned a lot of history, including inventors like Charles Drew. We used to have Jeopardy of African American inventors. I think I still to this day have the cheat sheet that I had to remember all the inventors. Charles Drew was the one that I always liked, also a chemist by the name of Percy Julian. providing care from birth to passing on to the next life. But through my medical school, internship, and clerkship experiences, I realized that the healthcare system is structured in a way where understanding the whole person doesn’ t afford that.
For instance, a middle-aged woman comes in and complains of back pain. She’ s teary eyed, looks dysphoric and she’ s depressed. And the primary care doctor only has 10 minutes, 15 minutes top to really deal with that chief complaint. But if he had more time, he’ d find out that her husband passed away and she’ s not able to sleep, things of that nature.
So, I really became drawn to how can I, in this field, learn about the whole person in treated and particularly at my medical school, Upstate Medical University. That’ s where I was able to gain that training. It’ s a very special place in a lot of ways. But one of the specialties of it is that it allows a physician to train to be able to learn how to treat the whole person looking at the biological aspect, the psychological aspect, as well as the social, economic and the historical context. And with my Africana Studies major, I really picked up on that because you’ re trained to look at things through an interdisciplinary lens, and understand people, understand community and issues from that. Pulling that in is what I use a lot to work with families.
Your special areas of focus your child and adolescent as well as forensic psychiatry. Why did you pursue that combination of interests?
Well, the long the short of it is I went to medical school thinking I was going to become a family doctor, family care. I had the whole idea of being in the community
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 31