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Dr. Patricia Bath – #DiversityInHealthcare

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This week’s #DiversityInHealthcare highlight is ophthalmologist Dr. Patricia Bath.

Dr. Patricia Bath portrait

Patricia Bath was born in 1942 in Harlem. She was inspired by Dr. Albert Schweitzer and her own family physician, Dr. Cecil Marquez, to pursue a career in medicine. She attended medical school at Howard University, had a fellowship at Columbia, and completed her residency at NYU.
The “firsts” achieved by Bath are too numerous to name, but among them are being the first African-American Ophthalmology resident at NYU, inventing the discipline of community ophthalmology, becoming the first woman on the faculty at UCLA’s Jules Stein Eye Institute, co-founding the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness, and inventing the laserphaco probe and method for removing cataracts. WOW.
Dr. Patricia Bath spent her long and illustrious career working to reduce racial disparities in ophthalmic care and in doing so was able to restore sight to people who had been blind for over 30 years.

More info is available at https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_26.html

Photo source: https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/static/img/portraits/26.jpg

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