| Broader Issues of Public Health
“She was a great believer in medicine,” Jeremy
Chess says of his mother, for whom he has recently named a
$50,000 endowed scholarship at the Boston University School
of Medicine. Chess, whose mother earned a Ph.D. in psychology
and was a clinical psychologist and encouraged all three of
her sons in their desire to become doctors, will himself help
fourth-year BU medical students interested in ophthalmology
through the Edith G. Chess, Ph.D., Scholarship Fund. The first
scholarship will be awarded in the fall of 2004 by Aram Chobanian,
dean of the medical school and provost of the medical campus,
in consultation with the department of ophthalmology.
Chess (CAS’70, MED’70), an associate clinical
professor of ophthalmology at the Albert Einstein College
of Medicine, has set his sights on helping people restore
theirs. In his metropolitan New York City retina group practice,
the diversity of Chess’s patients has opened his eyes.
“We treat people from all over the world,” he
says. “New York is a city of immigrants, and many people
bring their relatives who have advanced diseases. When you
see people coming in from overseas, you realize they represent
the tip of the iceberg — the number who can manage to
get to America for surgery is obviously tiny compared to the
number of people who require advanced retinal surgery.”
Through one of his patients, a former prime minister of Grenada,
Chess learned about the severity of diabetes, a major cause
of retinal disease, in that country. Inspired to help, Chess
and his colleagues founded the Retina Resource Foundation,
which now offers screening and treatment for disease-related
retina problems, as well as preventive measures for diabetes
in Grenada. The foundation works with local nurses and doctors
as well as the ministry of health to encourage the proper
monitoring of blood sugar, changes in diet, and education.
Plans include fish farming (much of the Caribbean’s
fish is exported) and the planting of “diabetic gardens,”
which grow special crops because the carbohydrate-rich local
foods — breadfruit, bananas, yams, potatoes —
are unhealthy for diabetics.
“Medical students are trained in current science,”
Chess says, “but they still have to maintain the idea
of going out and dealing with the broader issues of health
care.” His medical training and residency at Boston
University, he recalls, broadened his view. “One of
the things at BU that stays with me was my experience in the
home medical service,” he says. “We went out in
the community and visited patients in their homes and saw
the way people lived. That creates a certain approach to medicine.
I think a doctor has to be rooted in that kind of idea —
that it’s not just technical, it’s not just surgical.
That’s why I find medicine so sustaining.”
— Midge Raymond
Opportunities for Minority Students
John Polk (MED’74) describes his mother, Gladys, as
a woman who instilled in her eight children the importance
of education and taught them to read. John was reading at
three. By the time he was four, he was in first grade, and
at fifteen he was a freshman at Temple University in Philadelphia.
“Even today, at ninety years of age, she continues to
be an inspiration to me in my academic and intellectual pursuits,”
he says.
Polk, a thoracic surgeon with a private practice in Fall
River, Massachusetts, and a member of the School of Medicine’s
Board of Visitors, has honored his mother by pledging $100,000
to establish the Gladys C. Polk Scholarship. The fund will
benefit students matriculating through the School of Medicine’s
Early Medical School Selection Program (EMSSP), an innovative
program that recruits underrepresented minority students to
the medical school.
As a woman living in Mississippi in the 1940s, Gladys Polk
was ahead of her time. “Before she married my father,
my mother had what was equivalent to two years of college
and was a schoolteacher,” Polk says. After the children
grew up and moved away, she returned to school to become a
nurse. “She was a nurse until she was seventy-two years
of age,” he says. “The only reason she stopped
was because my father was ill. She took care of him until
he died. She’s an amazing person. She still lives [in
Mississippi], drives her own car, lives by herself. She’s
a very independent person.”
Polk chose to attend the Boston University School of Medicine
because he liked the size of the school and the environment,
which he describes as “conducive” to the education
of black students. “BU has always maintained that commitment
to having an open-door policy for all students, regardless
of race, sex, or religion,” he says. “It’s
a philosophy that I admire, and I’m proud to be part
of that tradition.”
The EMSSP, directed by Kenneth C. Edelin, associate dean
for student and minority affairs, was established in 1985
and is a partnership between the school and more than a dozen
colleges and universities, including historically black colleges.
Minority students accepted into the program — they apply
as college sophomores and are provisionally accepted to medical
school — spend two summers and their senior year taking
courses at BU. They return to the University as medical students
having completed some of their first-year requirements. Fourteen
students have been accepted into the program for this fall.
“It’s a wonderful program,” Polk says, describing
Edelin’s direction as exceptional. “I think he
deserves support for his efforts.”
— Cynthia K. Buccini
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