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Last spring, when Prince Boadi accepted an offer to attend Duke University School of Medicine starting in the fall of 2020, he knew the experience—leaving his family and friends in Chicago, learning his way around Durham, meeting new people, and taking on the rigors of medical school—would be different from anything else he’d ever done. He just didn’t expect it to be quite this different.

For most medical students, getting the opportunity to don a white coat is a major milestone, one that fills them with excitement to be that much closer to becoming a doctor. Kirsten Simmons had that same excitement initially too. But as time passed, Simmons, now in her fourth year of medical school at Duke, says her white coat gradually gained new meaning. It now feels heavy and represents a burden she wishes she didn’t have to bear.

In his nearly nine years working at Duke, Lowell Tyler says there have been countless times when he’s been the only Black person or Black man in the room. It can be a bit of a challenge, and even though it’s a situation he has gotten accustomed to, he says it’s one that can—and should—change.

When reports early last winter indicated that a mysterious new infectious disease had broken out of its point of origin in Wuhan, China, Charles Lucore, MD’83, P’17, MBA, began to prepare for its possible arrival in New York. Lucore was one year into his new position as president of St. Francis Hospital, a highly rated hospital and cardiac care center on Long Island. Because New York is a hub of international travel, he anticipated the novel coronavirus would eventually show up.

Before Claire Aldridge, PhD’96, and her husband, Matt Burnside, took their daughter on a long-planned spring break trip to New York City, she checked travel guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, where she is associate vice president of commercialization and business development. The focus at the time was on surface transmission of the novel coronavirus: avoid touching doorknobs, wash your hands frequently, and don’t touch your face.

A Long Struggle Eric Dziuban, MD’07, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s country director for the southwest African nation of Namibia, was enjoying a weekend at the coast with his family when the call came. A Romanian couple who had recently arrived in the Namibian capital of Windhoek from Spain had fallen ill. Tests confirmed everyone’s fear: COVID-19 had finally come to Namibia.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck last spring and temporarily forced Duke’s clinical operations to be limited to essential personnel only, the more than 1,000 residents and fellows in the Graduate Medical Education (GME) programs at Duke stayed put.

Three Duke Researchers spoke on the Center for Global Women’s Health Technologies’ October 20 panel “Impact of Race and Socioeconomic Status in Women’s Health and Gynecology.” The panel was moderated by Ashley Deans and Alexandria Da Ponte.

Duke alumnus Lorin Crawford SS’17 has been named a 2020 Packard Fellow, a prestigious fellowship awarded to the nation’s most promising early-career scientists and engineers. Crawford, who is currently the RGSS Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at Brown University and a senior researcher at Microsoft Research New England, is part of a group of 20 scientists who will each receive $875,000 over five years to pursue their research.

                          OPSD celebrates the legacy of our first Associate Dean, Physician-Scientist Development, Dr. Sallie Permar, as she prepares to leave Duke to become the Nancy Paduano Professor and Chair of Pediatrics/ Pediatrician-in-Chief at Weill Cornell Medical School/New York Presbyterian Hospital, effective December 1, 2020.