Patricia discovered the social impact of medicine when she was a young girl, and knew that she had to become a doctor. She grew up in Harlem, in New York City, and her parents encouraged her passion for the sciences. Patricia excelled in high school and college and even started receiving awards for her scientific research at age 16. She attended Hunter College and then left NYC to pursue her medical degree at Howard University, in Washington DC. When she returned to New York, she held an internship at Harlem Hospital and following that, a fellowship in ophthalmology - the treatment of eye disorders - at Columbia University.
Patricia began to notice very different patterns at these two institutions. At Harlem Hospital, almost all the patients were blind or visually impaired, whereas at Columbia, there were almost no blind patients. She became curious, conducted research, and discovered that blindness was twice as common in the black community! Patricia hypothesized that this disparity was due to lack of ophthalmic care, and made it her life mission to improve access to eye disorder care for low income communities. Harlem Hospital had an eye clinic, but they didn’t have any doctors who could perform surgeries. Patricia convinced her professors at Columbia to perform surgeries for free, and she assisted at these surgeries, opening the door for so many people who needed eye care but couldn’t afford it.
