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.

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.

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

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

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.

Nikki Mahendru’s mother didn’t go to the gynecologist for 45 years — and when she did, she regretted it. Ms.

Duke alumnus Lorin Crawford SS’17 has been named a 2020 Packard Fello

Professor Wong Tien Yin, NUS Provost’s Chair Professor and Vice Dean, Academic & Clinical Development