Healthcare disparities are often marked with very thin lines. Here in Nashville, our team daily crosses one named Charlotte Avenue. Its four lanes signal a transition from ubiquitous organic grocers and hot-yoga clubs to food deserts and decaying parks plagued by violence. We each chose to learn the medical arts in this environment however, hoping that by training among North Nashville’s safety-net populace we would have the best chance of impacting its health on a grand scale. The brand of care we aim to deliver provides culturally and linguistically tailored medicine to groups with no choice as though they had every option. This is not a distant, lofty goal – it is a daily mission born of and practiced through our experiences.

As a pre-med, Jay Sheree Allen founded Women of Excellence, Strength and Tenacity, Inc. (WEST), a 501(c)3 nonprofit designed to empower the young women of Harlem to develop their leadership abilities. Bolstered by her background as a Jamaican immigrant, she drove programming that brought modern health education to a community largely untouched by it. Her focus on the underserved led her to Tanzania, where she spent a month teaching both chemistry and biology in Girl’s Empowerment Science Camps. Her zeal for combating women’s health disparities is only matched by the problem-solving prowess of Andrew Marshall. After witnessing the hurdles fielded by U.S. physicians working to save his father’s life, ‘Drew’ committed himself to delivering the innovations of modern healthcare to such under-equipped arenas as his native Barbados. Armed with a degree in computer science, he applied his knowledge of code to medicine; developing apps that educate medical students, improve patient care, and support Meharry’s first student-run clinic. While competent physicians inspired Drew to approach problems from new angles, under-exposed patients drove Julian Hinson’s desire to see simple solutions applied broadly. While shadowing doctors in Accra, Ghana, Julian received word that his uncle had died of a heart-attack in the same city. Bystanders ignorant of CPR had doused him with water before calling a makeshift ambulance – a taxi honking its horn endlessly. Returning to the states, Julian took notice of the impact of health media; from magazine ads explaining “What Drowning Really Looks Like” to the impact of the “Truth” anti-smoking campaigns. This led him to pursue both graphic design and photography as tools of patient education.

Despite our various backgrounds, our desire to cross the boundaries of healthcare is shared, as is our appreciation for the lessons learned during international experiences. The Timmy Global Health Challenge offers a unique opportunity to not only deliver care to the underserved, but to formulate our own strategies to meet the needs of our patients. Medicine is not a calling for the prepared, but rather prepares the called. The Global Health Challenge is another piece of that training, a chance for us to extend our social, technical and creative skills in addition to our medical knowledge to erase yet another line.