By Sarah Sargent
Ten years ago, Abdullah Hasan Pratt, MD’16, began his career at UChicago Medicine and dedicated himself to the community he grew up in on the South Side of Chicago. In addition to serving as an emergency medicine physician, he founded the Trauma Recovery and Prevention of Violence (TRAP) program and the Medical Careers Exposure and Emergency Preparedness (MedCEEP) program.
A new generation of medical students and recent graduates, inspired by his example, are shaping their careers around service to the community and becoming mentors themselves.
“Under Dr. Pratt’s guidance, I co-founded Sneakers to Scrubs. What I gained is irreplaceable: real-world leadership and a deep commitment to my community. I’ll carry Dr. Pratt’s example of authentic leadership into my career,” said Jameel Alausa, third year medical student. “My advice to future students: engage with heart; Dr. Pratt’s model shows how much impact that brings.”
Identifying community needs
“I’m originally from the 9th ward of New Orleans, LA, and endemic violence was a very matter of fact part of my life,” said Symphony Fletcher, MD’24. “I met Dr. Pratt at a conference while I was in college and I just went up to him and said, ‘I want to be involved, what can I do?’ This has now blossomed into a nearly decade long mentorship relationship.”
For some students and alums, the choice of community programs began with personal experience. Others observed a need and found a way to address it.
For Ishaan Kumar, fourth year medical student, volunteering with Chicago Street Medicine provided a way to reach a particularly vulnerable population. “Often you think about medicine done in a place like a clinic or hospital,” he said. “Street medicine is a reversal of that idea. Instead of waiting for them to show up in the emergency room, we go with primary care physicians and offer the care they need where they are.”
Zhong Huang, MD’26, observed a need for a service he could provide. “I saw patients and families who had not done the work of advance care planning: talking about what one might desire at the end of their life and ensuring those values are documented for the care team. I worked with our geriatric faculty, Katherine Thompson, MD’05, who connected me with older adults and social service nonprofits. I was able to go in, talk to folks, and ask ‘What makes your life worth living? How do we make sure care teams are aware of these preferences?’”
Becoming mentors and advocates
As the students moved through their education and into residency, they became advocates and mentors themselves.
“I serve as a research director for the Trauma and Violence Recovery Program,” said Fletcher. “I also mentor medical school students and bring them into the research program to show that this is an opportunity for rigorous scholarly work and that you don’t only have to do clinical, bench, or lab work. We can study the real work we are doing out in the community.”
Fletcher added, “We want students to understand leadership. One of the first steps is identifying community partners. A big issue that most folks run into is trying to create everything on their own. The reason why the Trauma and Violence Recovery Program worked is because we identified community partners early on.”
For Kumar, advocating for the community was an integral part of the experience of medical school. “To me, having all the wonderful opportunities that UChicago offers a medical student, it would feel inherently wrong not to engage with the community in a long-term and durable way that promotes the health of the most marginalized,” he said.
Defining a career centered around service
Working in the community helped refine and define career goals. “Going into medicine, I always envisioned that I wanted to do some kind of equity and community service work,” said Fletcher. “Being at Pritzker and seeing giants in the field of community outreach, I realized there were individuals who had built careers in this field from the ground.”
“Service was a core motivator for why I wanted to pursue medicine in the first place. To be able to incorporate these experiences into my education at this relatively early stage is, frankly, a joy and a privilege. Without these experiences, I would lose sight of the values and motivation that brought me here,” said Huang.
“Working with Chicago Street Medicine has given me career clarity,” said Kumar. “Street medicine is ultimately defined by dignity, by returning dignity to people who have been otherwise stripped of it by society.”
“The greatest measure of success”
“My goal has never been simply to teach students how to serve communities, but how to lead alongside them,” said Pratt. “
“By combining community partnership, population health data, scholarship, program development, and mentorship, we aim to equip future physicians with the skills necessary to address health inequities in a sustainable way. The greatest measure of success is not any single program, but seeing our students become the next generation of physician leaders who continue this work in their own communities.”