Bearing witness to patients’ experiences

As soon as Katz came to Brown, he and Bush became friends as well as research collaborators. In the summer after his first year of medical school, Katz traveled to the Solomon Islands to work on a project focused on diabetic limb amputations. While studying patients’ experiences there from a qualitative and quantitative research perspective, he started thinking about ways he could show their experiences more fully.

The Solomon Islands is an archipelago located over three hours by plane from the nearest large city in Australia. There is limited access to healthcare, including from specialists and surgeons. Yet there’s a rising incidence of diabetes, which, without proper management, can cause nerve damage and poor blood flow to the feet, requiring emergency amputation.

Katz had picked up photography as a hobby during the COVID-19 pandemic and had brought his camera with him during his undergraduate research trip to Rwanda, where he used it to show how clean water deficiency impacted health conditions. He had his camera in the Solomon Islands, too, and he started asking some of the diabetic amputees with whom he was working for permission to take their portraits. His goal is to eventually share the photos in the U.S. as part of a series to increase awareness of the patients’ healthcare challenges. 

“One of the most meaningful parts of this experience has been witnessing the reactions of the people I photograph when they see their images, as well as seeing how those photographs resonate with others,” Katz said. “It has deepened my appreciation for the power of photography to not only tell stories, but to uplift voices, affirm lived experiences and create meaningful connections between people who might otherwise never cross paths.”

Global lens, ‘whole patient’ focus

Katz’s academic schedule, which involves working side by side with practicing physicians in the hospital, doesn’t leave much time for international travel, but he continues to think and work globally. As part of his scholarly concentration in medical humanities and ethics, he is leading a photography and multimedia project with the Refugee Dream Center in Providence. He goes to the center as often as he can to interview the volunteers and staff and create portraits of them. This project is longitudinal in nature: While he organized one exhibit on Brown’s campus to raise funds for the center, he’s interested in documenting, over time, how the changes in federal immigration policy have affected the people as well as the work at the center. 

Last summer, in between clinical rotations, Katz mentored a first-year medical student at Brown (who is also passionate about studying global surgery) in launching a breast cancer registry in the Solomon Islands, to help medical experts there see patterns in prevalence and incidence. 

“It’s been wonderful to be able to continue the tradition of Warren Alpert medical students providing clinical care and research in an area that desperately needs both,” Katz said.

In his fourth year, Katz plans to return to the Solomon Islands with funding from Brown’s Edward Guiliano ’72 Global Graduate Fellowship Award, which he learned about in the Center for Global Health Equity newsletter, to continue research on referral and screening protocols for noncommunicable diseases.

Katz’s experiences in the field and in the hospitals, as well as his work with mentors such as Dr. Ruhul Abid, a professor of surgery (research), and Dr. Stephanie Garbern, an associate professor of emergency medicine and director of medical student research, have helped him decide to specialize in global emergency medicine.

“I think the Warren Alpert Medical School has done such an amazing job teaching us about treating not just the illness or the condition, but the whole patient,” Katz said. “That was strongly emphasized in the core curriculum during our first two years. It’s something that has prepared me well for my clinical rotations and that I think will prepare me for my future career. I feel so grateful to Brown for training doctors in this special way.”