Authors: Laura, Meghan Etsey, Vashti Price, Janis Robinson Daly
“Our Voices, Our Future” is a podcast by the Gender Equity Task Force of the American Medical Women’s Association that explores the challenges, stories, and successes of those working to advance gender equity in medicine. Through candid conversations with changemakers, advocates, and leaders, each episode dives into issues like pay gaps, leadership disparities, and inclusive workplace culture. Tune in to be inspired, informed, and empowered to take action. Full episode listening links are available below the transcription.
Laura: Welcome to Our Voices, Our Future, a podcast where we amplify the voices driving change in equity within medicine and beyond. Brought to you by the Gender Equity Task Force, a committee of the American Medical Women’s Association. We’re here to challenge norms, break barriers, and ignite conversations that matter.
I’m your host, Laura Ricochea, and in each episode, we bring you candid conversations with leaders, change makers, and advocates, working to create a more inclusive and just world. No more silence, no more waiting. It’s time to get Our Voices, Our Future.
Laura: Today, we welcome Janice Robinson-Dailey, author of The Unlocked Path and The Path Beneath Her Feet. A graduate of Wheaton College, Janice spent much of her career in sales and marketing before transitioning to full-time writing. Through her work in historical fiction, she brings to life the untold stories of women in early 20th-century medicine. Her writing explores female-centric issues and the power of supportive relationships among women. Welcome, Janice. We’re so happy to have you here with us today.
Mrs. Daly: Thank you, Laura. It’s wonderful to reconnect with you and all the great work in so many different forms that AMWA puts together.
Laura: Can you share how your journey as a writer began?
Mrs. Daly: Certainly. So I took a very unusual path, if you will. I never set out to be a writer. I never set out to be an author. I spent my career in sales and marketing and raised two sons with my family. I was actually starting to think of a new hobby for myself after my kids got through college, and that was turning to genealogy research, specifically into my grandmother Robinson’s family, which came from Philadelphia. Through that discovery of looking into those roots, I found my great-great-grandfather, William Shannon Pierce, quite an accomplished man of his time in Philadelphia. He was a lawyer involved in the abolitionist movement in the 1850s. He went on to become a judge in the Court of Common Pleas. The father of seven daughters and one son. So, pretty much surrounded by women.
I’m learning all these amazing facts about him and reading some essays and eulogies about him. Then the final line in an entry for his name in Famous Americans stopped me dead in my tracks. It read: “He was a founder of the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania.” I was blown away by the fact that there were women’s medical schools. I had never heard of any of them before. I am a graduate of a women’s college, Wheaton College in Massachusetts, which was all women when I graduated, and it is now coed. I was immediately drawn to this idea that there were women’s medical schools because, of course, in the 1800s, almost all medical schools denied women admission. The Browns, the Harvards, the Yales, the Johns Hopkins, and the Penns of the world did not admit women. There were just a few smaller schools, like the one in upstate New York that Elizabeth Blackwell attended. The fact that there were forward-thinking men, including my great-great-grandfather, who founded this first women’s medical school, intrigued me. I decided I wanted to learn more about this medical school, which gave me the idea of writing a book.
Laura: That is so cool that searching for a hobby led you to such an interesting discovery. So you could have written more specifically about the college’s founding in 1850 and your great-great-grandfather’s role, maybe even focused on the work of a forward-thinking man on behalf of women. What inspired you to focus more specifically on the lives of the students and graduates of the college?
Mrs. Daly: At first, I was thinking, Wow, my ancestor needs to be honored for the work that he did. I was even playing around with some ideas connected to his work in the abolitionist movement. I started researching Women’s Medical further, and that’s when I started to meet some other people along the road, specifically the students, the staff, the dean, the professors, and the graduates, and what they went on to do. These were incredibly determined and accomplished women of the 1800s. Then I started thinking more about them and why I haven’t ever learned anything about them. Never heard of early women doctors. I’m a huge fan of historical fiction. I’m an avid reader. I belong to multiple book clubs. We read a lot of historical fiction, and I had never read a book about real women doctors.
This was in 2017 when this whole journey started. So I thought, you know, these women need to be celebrated and honored. Their stories are like so many historical fiction novels of recent times that talk about women involved in World War II, the resistance in France, the concentration camps, and everything, but where was the story about these women in medicine? So I decided I was going to pull them out of the shadows of history, and I was going to write their stories and celebrate them. That’s why I decided to focus more on the women of Women’s Medical and develop the story from there.
Laura: Honestly, I’m glad you did, because as you said, we don’t hear about those stories. It’s not very common, and I think it’s so inspiring. Whenever I tell people I’m in medical school, they say, “Oh wow, good for you.”. I think women of the past deserve so much more recognition for pushing those social expectations, because that was not the norm.
Mrs. Daly: No, not at all.
Laura: I’m so glad you chose to write about them instead. So, for listeners who haven’t read your books yet. Can you share a brief overview of the plots of “The Unlocked Path” and its sequel, “The Path Beneath Her Feet”, without giving any spoilers?
Mrs. Daly: I’ll try not to give away any spoilers. One thing you learn after writing a book is that the hardest thing is writing a blurb, describing your book in a short paragraph, your 350-page book in one short paragraph.
The Unlocked Path, my debut novel, presents first and foremost a term that began to emerge at the end of the 19th century: the “new woman.” A new woman for the upcoming new century at the turn of the 20th century. Women who were educated, career-minded, and independent. In The Unlocked Path, set in 1897 Philadelphia. My fictional character, Eliza Edwards, rejects society norms and her mother’s wishes that she have a society debut, instead, in part spurred on by a tragedy in her family with one of her aunts. Eliza decides to apply to the Women’s Medical College. This was at a time in 1897 when less than 5% of all doctors were women. She is supported by a circle of women, and together they are driven by determination to conquer curriculum demands, battle sexism, and overcome their doubts. She is charting a new life course in a coming-of-age story. That’s the first book, The Unlocked Path.
The Path Beneath Her Feet is a sequel that picks up Dr. Edwards’ story in 1936. The first book, from 1897 to 1920, takes her through medical school, residency, and early practice. Then I jump to the height of the Depression in 1936, and Eliza is now a mature mentor. However, she’s still steadfast in her calling to affect social change by addressing women’s health issues and guiding others to realize their dreams. As the Depression ravages careers across the board, with unemployment over 30%. Eliza has to redefine her abilities. She travels on new paths to Georgia and Tennessee, reclaiming her purpose and rediscovering her ambition, partly through the American Women’s Hospitals rural units in Appalachia. The story then moves into the 1940s and World War II, life on the home front. Dr. Eliza Edwards continues her unyielding pursuit to limit suffering and save lives. So that’s the brief version. You’ll have to pick up both books to read the full version.
Laura: Yeah, and I feel like just hearing about the first book—if you read it, you’d have to read the second book.
Mrs. Daly: Everyone says that! I meet with many book clubs, and after reading the first book, they are like, “Well, what happened next?!” and I say, “Read the next book”.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, I have a growing book list for this next year, so those are two more books to add. It sounds so interesting, as I said before, and I don’t mean to be repetitive. Still, I think it’s just also so inspiring. That’s what draws me most to wanting to read them.
Your books are so rich in historical detail. How did you go about the research behind your work? Were there stories or moments that surprised you along the way?
Mrs. Daly: Oh, yeah. A lot of research. First, reading a lot of nonfiction. An invaluable book in my research was the history of the Women’s Medical College: A New and Untried Course by Dr. Steven Peitzman. I also read books about Elizabeth Blackwell and early doctors. Sympathy and Science was another key resource; it was almost a model for the ethos of Women’s Medical: the practice of sympathy and science, particularly for women doctors. Then I did interviews. I spoke with current female medical students, thinking their struggles probably weren’t all that different today than they were 100 years ago. I also talked to medical advisors. The biggest resource and place I could’ve spent days and days was Drexel University’s Legacy Center. Women’s Medical College was the first women’s medical school, opened in 1850, and ran the longest, all the way to the early 1970s. They eventually started accepting men and became the Medical College of Pennsylvania, later merging with Drexel.
Drexel in Philadelphia now holds all the archival materials from Women’s Medical. I spent two full days there, one for each book, pouring through incredible artifacts, correspondence, grade reports, financial records, dean’s reports, photographs and items like a bone box. That surprised me, so I had to include it in the book. Students had to rent a bone box and put down a $5 deposit, which was a lot of money in 1897. They’d get about 15 to 20 bones, and between the 40 students in a class, they could just about assemble two full skeletons. At the end of the year, if their box was fully inventoried, they’d get 80% of their $5 back. That was pretty cool, and I definitely brought that into a fun scene in the first book while Eliza’s at medical school.
Another moment that blew me away was when I was in the archives. Matt Herbison, the primary archivist there, had gathered materials for my second book. I had asked him for anything related to the 1930s and 40s, so he had two carts filled with different information folders. I was going through them chronologically and reached the 1940s when I opened a folder and found a small, official-looking pamphlet. I looked at it more closely, wondering what it was. It looked like a bunch of official language. It was the transcript of the congressional hearings in the U.S. Congress from 1942. When the War Department, either shortly before or after Pearl Harbor in 1941, had written a law stating that they had the legal right to draft medical personnel for the war effort. So they could draft medical professionals for the war effort. I thought, okay, what’s going on here?
When war broke out and the U.S. got involved, they started calling up everyone. Of course, women doctors wanted to serve. They had volunteered in World War I but had never been accepted. This led to the formation of the American Women’s Hospital Unit. This self-funded group went to France without a connection to the U.S. Army Medical Corps. By World War II, this next generation of women doctors wanted to serve, but this time with full rank, military pay, and veterans’ benefits, because you’re saying you’re going to draft medical professionals. The War Department said, “Yes, but we didn’t mean women.” When they said “people” or “persons,” they didn’t mean women. So women weren’t people, what? I had to put that in my book. I found this congressional pamphlet documenting three days of the U.S. Congress debating whether women were people. They eventually overturned the law, and over 8,000 women doctors joined the U.S. Army Medical Corps. They received their benefits, their rank. In fact, the first to receive a commission was the current dean of Women’s Medical, Margaret Craighill, who became Major Margaret Craighill.
Laura: I can’t believe they were like, “Oh, when we said people, we didn’t think of women.” Like… what? That’s just shocking.
Mrs. Daly: That wasn’t even that long ago, 80 years.
Laura: Once you learned about the women who attended the Women’s Medical College, how did you decide which aspects of their experience to weave into your characters and plot?
Mrs. Daly: My main character is because I didn’t want to write a biographical historical fiction. I wanted to bring to life a range of women medical professionals. Eliza Edwards is fictional but considered a composite character. She’s inspired by many pieces and elements of the different women I read about. There are two women in The Unlocked Path who are based on real individuals. I believe Dr. Charlotte Fairbanks graduated from Women’s Medical in 1902. She was a surgeon who served as the chief surgeon and went to France with the American Women’s Hospital Unit. I had to think that a surgeon would be very precise, straight, and narrow, and get down to business. Those features shaped Charlotte’s character and how she interacted with people. The other woman was Dr. Olga Pawinski from Lithuania. She didn’t speak English when she entered Women’s Medical at 18 years old in 1897. She went on to accomplish so much, but one snippet I read about her quoted her. After attending an anatomy class discussing Darwinism, she was interviewed and asked what she thought of the lecture. Still learning English, she said, “I’m not really sure I followed all of it. I thought it was a bunch of monkey business.” Olga had a great, sharp wit, whether she knew she was making a play on words or not. I think she did. That helped shape her character as someone fun.
In The Path Beneath Her Feet, Olga and Charlotte return as friends and supporters of Eliza and her circle. I take a more direct route with Olga’s path. She went on to work for the New York Department of Public Health for 40 years in bacteriology, working on toxins and vaccines for diphtheria and other diseases. She even designed a large rectangular culture bottle that I still don’t fully understand scientifically, but it was instrumental in Jonas Salk’s development of the polio vaccine. A life science company in New Hampshire now manufactures the Olga Pawinski bottle. It’s trademarked. I also drew inspiration from women like Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy, Dr. Lillian South, and Dr. Hila Sheriff, all amazing women who started the American Women’s Hospital Unit in the rural South in the 1930s in Appalachia. They opened maternity centers and drove mobile health units through the mud-filled roads of Appalachia. All of that comes to life in The Path Beneath Her Feet.
Laura: Wow, that is some really impressive work that they did and that you found out and wrote about. So you talk about how Eliza is a composite character. How did you go about developing her as a character? Were there specific qualities or real-life figures that influenced how you shaped her story?
Mrs. Daly: A lot of it came from archive material. Reading student correspondence and application essays. I also interviewed medical students and asked them why they chose medicine. I’m not sure if I would call it a majority, but many of them shared that they had been personally affected by a family members with either a chronic disease or died from the complications of a terrible disease or injury of some sort. So that’s why I pulled in Eliza’s decision that she’s impacted by the loss of her aunt in the book’s opening scene, which makes her reevaluate her life. Also, on Instagram, this older writer is still hip enough to be on Instagram. There’s an Instagram account called Women in Medicine. It’s fabulous that it’s always women and many students posting about their fears, self-doubt, and struggles in medical school. Then you see the others respond with encouragement. That sisterhood feeling and circle of women was really important for me to show Eliza had that type of support too, and look to it and lean on it, knowing it would be there.
Laura: Wow. Yeah, I honestly think that even though it’s been years since Eliza’s stories took place, it’s unfortunate that many women medical students still face some of the same issues. The support that we give to each other can really just help us make it through.
I read that you consulted beta and sensitivity readers, including Dr. Eliza Chin, Executive Director of AMWA, and Dr. Molly Marr, currently in residency at Massachusetts General, as part of your manuscript development. So what role did their feedback play in shaping the authenticity of my portrayal of women in medicine?
Mrs. Daly: After I finished my manuscript and worked with a few editors, I received feedback from beta readers and friends from writing circles to give critical feedback. Then I get to the point where I am realizing. A lot is going on globally in the publishing industry, thinking bout writers being authentic to their story, especially if they’re writing a character or story they don’t personally identify with or experience. How can you really be authentic to those stories? There was growing awareness in the publishing industry around 2020, when I was ready to publish my book. Full disclosure: I have no background in medicine. I don’t even know how I passed BIO 101 in college. A friend in my writing group was writing a memoir of his work in a New York City ER department. He helped me with a couple of medical scenes. I realized I needed a woman doctor to ensure I was being true to a woman’s experience in medicine. I am forever grateful to Dr. Chin for answering a blind email I sent to [email protected]. Just looking for someone to help me. I even proposed that maybe a retired doctor in your membership might want to be interested in this little project. Dr. Chin responded and said she was interested. She did admit it helped that the main character’s name was Eliza!
So I sent it after her, and she returned with some amazing feedback. Dr. Molly Marr also helped correct a couple of other medical scenes, especially with OB-GYN scenes that I don’t think my ER doctor friend knew as much about. They corrected a few things and helped me strengthen the authenticity of the medical and emotional experiences in the story. There were instances of being authentic to the period, which was the early 20th century, but also being cognizant of today’s readers and social justice movements that were going on. Specifically called out a scene where I mentioned that a baby is born as a mongoloid. Now, that was the term used all the way up until the 1960s, when we started to accept the use of Down Syndrome. Mongoloid and Mongoloidism certainly can be an offensive term to today’s readers, so I had to kind of work with how to be authentic to the period but not be offensive. So we kind of reworked those scenes where I infer from a description of the baby that he was a mongoloid, where he had Down syndrome, but I don’t have my character, Dr. Edwards, say the word. Now, I kept it in later in the book when it was truly being used as a medical reference, but it wasn’t being spoken from the point of view of my character.
Another instance was where I have a scene where Dr. Edwards is distributing copies of Family Limitations, the pamphlet directed at birth control created by Margaret Sanger. Again, I needed to be authentic to the time period. Unfortunately, Margaret Sanger’s name later became associated with the eugenics movement. So I had to tiptoe around that issue as well. If Dr. Chin hadn’t pointed out both of those instances to me and had helped me recast the scenes so that they would be authentic. Finally, just as a fun note, I even passed my cover design by Dr. Chin. I had staged the photo on the front cover, which has a kind of vintage-looking black doctor’s bag, and there’s a stethoscope draped over it. I bought both off eBay and am trying to find vintage pieces. The original stethoscope I had had black tubing, and Dr. Chin pointed out that at that time period, it would have been brown rubber tubing. So thank you, Photoshop, we could get it up to the time period there, too.
Laura: It is so nice that Dr. Eliza responded to your email. What do you hope readers take away from your work, not just about the characters, but about the time period or women’s roles more broadly?
Mrs. Daly: It goes back to what inspired me to write this book. We need to appreciate and celebrate what the women of past generations went through to unlock and pave the path available for women in medicine today. I mean, when you think that they were denied admission to medical schools. Once they graduated with an accredited degree, they still couldn’t find jobs because many hospitals wouldn’t hire them, or they had limited slots reserved for women. In fact, Women’s Medical College opened the first hospital associated with a higher learning institution, mainly to give their graduates a place to work. Then, thinking that, over 125 years ago, only about 5% of our doctors were women. That actually dropped to 4% during the Depression, when many women had to close their practices or lost their jobs or had men telling their wives they weren’t going to pay the fee for them to go see a woman doctor. “Go see a man doctor; he’s the head of a household and needs a job.” You know, that was the primary battle cry during the Depression.
Yet now, I just saw for AMWA, 38% of doctors are women, and a group Learn at Pinnacle mentioned that 54% of medical students now are women. How awesome is that?
So yes, there are still disparities in pay between the genders or in the presence of different specialties. Those 54% of medical students who identify as women today must appreciate and understand what the women who came before them went through.
Laura: I agree. We have so much to thank because they opened the door for the many women who followed them and us today. In my matriculating class, there were more women than there were men.
Mrs. Daly: Wow, that’s amazing.
Laura: So we’ve made a lot of progress, but there’s still more progress. Like you said, it’s important to recognize everything done in the past to get to where we are today.
In what ways do you hope your stories move the conversation forward on gender equity in medicine or even beyond the world of medicine?
Mrs. Daly: It’s showcasing their accomplishments that were just as important and contributed to advancing medicine and patient care as those achieved by men. These women have the same skills, have undergone the same training, have the same fortitude, and have the ability to study and practice medicine. Perhaps even more so, they also apply a sense of sympathy and empathy to their patients. I know AMWA has done studies on this, too, just about listening to patients, and there is a difference between the genders.
Actually, I have met with many book clubs, and one question that I would like to ask them is whether they specifically seek out a woman doctor. Most of my book club members are women, and most answered yes when they thought about that sympathy and empathy equation, especially for OB-GYN. Then, for specialized care, though, most would say they just want the best qualified, whether that’s a man or woman; they just want the best out there that they can find in their area.
So, to illustrate this idea about how far we’ve come, the gender question and the abilities of women, then and now, I’d like to read a fairly short excerpt from The Unlocked Path. It takes place around 1904–1905. My main character, Eliza Edwards, is in her residency at the West Philadelphia Hospital. Hopefully, this excerpt reflects what many residents feel, but with a slight twist of the time setting:
Mrs. Daly (reading from The Unlocked Path)
“As the room settled into quiet anticipation, the door opened again to admit another staff member, the newest addition and the most senior. Dr. Whitaker walked to the center of the theater, where Dr. Howe awaited him. Beads of deep-set dark brown eyes considered the personnel assembled before him. A thick mustache spread across his upper lip like a trimmed hedge creeping to the far reaches of his cheeks. His starched high-collared shirt stood as stiff as the clipboard in his hands. His black suit and silk tie resembled an undertaker’s.
The new administrator stepped in front of Dr. Howe. Douglas Whitaker would make his own introduction.
“Good morning. For those who didn’t read Dr. Howe’s communication last week, I am Dr. Whitaker, administrator of West Philadelphia Hospital. I’ve spent the past eight years at the esteemed Grady Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, one of my city’s newest hospitals. We’ve been rebuilding ever since your General Sherman marched through with torches in his hand and Southern blood on his sleeve.”
As Dr. Whitaker continued to espouse his credentials and hinted at other vestiges of hostilities from the war between the states, Eliza’s eyelids grew heavy. Her shift had started at seven with a routine delivery, followed by the adrenaline-rush emergency of Bianca versus the balloon. Now, with time to relax, fatigue enveloped her body. Her shoulders slumped as her head bobbed. When her chin hit her chest, she stripped from the siren of sleep.
“Much to learn. I expect intake forms to be concise and complete. You’ll follow orders without question and treatments administered according to the directives of your supervisors.”
Eliza caught these comments, thinking they were useless. Every staff member followed orders and administered care under their supervisor’s direction. Her patient forms and reports were always complete. She allowed her eyes to droop again.
“I am adjusting doctors’ schedules and assignments. Grady Hospital is similar in size to West Philadelphia. But I find the number of physicians here limiting. While I work to secure funding to hire more graduates from Jefferson Hospital Medical School in Pennsylvania, I will schedule separate female doctors or residents from the same shift. I’ve heard how too much time together can stimulate an alignment of womanly cycles. I won’t have an entire shift of practicing doctors and nurses incapacitated on the same days each month.” (end of excerpt reading from The Unlocked Path)
Mrs. Daly: So that was often the attitude of many toward women in the workplace, especially when performing what can often be physical labor that many doctors would have to do. It comes from the research that I had done on Mary Putnam Jacoby, who graduated from Women’s Medical College in 1864. In 1876, she was the first woman to receive the Boylston Medical Prize from Harvard University for her essay on the question of rest for women during menstruation. Her entire study went on to debunk information that had previously come out from Dr. Edward Clark’s publication of Sex in Education; or, A Fair Chance for the Girls, which had questioned the expanded role of women in society and in professions. Dr. Jacoby went on to prove that women are stable, strong, agile, and not rattled during their menstrual cycles. That scene from The Unlocked Path pays homage to Dr. Jacoby’s prize-winning work.
Laura: Wow. I would have been so infuriated if I had been sitting there listening to that address.
Mrs. Daly: Yeah, well, you read the rest of the scene, you find out Eliza, too, is infuriated and even says, “I’m going to throw some of Dr. Jacoby’s research onto his desk tomorrow morning.”
Laura: Yeah, I will do the same thing. Oh my gosh. I don’t even have the words. It’s just jaw-dropping to hear something like that.
Before we close, that was all the questions that I had prepared, but before we end, I just wanted to ask you if there’s anything else that you would like to share with the audience?
Mrs. Daly: Well, first, I would like to thank you, Laura, for having me on the podcast and discussing such an important topic. The title is partly looking to the future, but let’s not forget the past. I always hope through historical fiction, in particular, that reaches a broader audience, that hopefully we will learn from our past and improve for our future. If anyone is interested in reading my books. They are available on Amazon, in paperback, ebook, Audible version, and Barnes and Noble. You can ask any local bookstore or library to order your copy. I also have paperback copies available for purchase directly from me. Anyone who does make a purchase directly from me and mentions AMWA or that they heard about my books from the AMWA podcast. I am happy to make a $5 donation for each purchase to the American Women’s Hospital Unit, which continues to do great work around the world, funding many different clinics and practices, and travel stipends for students. So I would be happy to donate in the name of whoever purchases the book. All you have to do is drop me an email at [email protected] or check out my website, and contact me through my website.
Laura: Well, thank you so much, Janice. I really enjoyed our conversation. It was also very nice to meet you and learn more about everything behind writing your two works.
So that’s a wrap on this episode of Our Voices Our Future. We hope today’s conversation inspired, challenged, and reminded you of the power of raising your voice. The fight for equity doesn’t stop here. Join us in the movement. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. If you love this episode, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Until next time, stay bold, vocal, and keep the conversation going. This is Our Voices, Our Future.
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About the Authors
Laura Uricoechea, MS4
Laura Uricoechea is a fourth-year medical student at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. She is currently completing a Master of Public Health at Thomas Jefferson University between her third and fourth years of medical school. Laura is applying to OB/GYN residency and is passionate about women’s health, particularly reproductive healthcare. She is an active member of the Gender Equity Task Force within the American Medical Women’s Association. Outside of medicine, Laura enjoys spending time outdoors—she loves hiking, paddleboarding, swimming, and playing tennis.
Meghan Etsey, MS4
Meghan Etsey is a fourth year medical student from St. George’s University. She has a Bachelors of Arts in Biology and a Bachelors of Arts in Nutrition and Dietetics from Bluffton University in Bluffton, Ohio. She served as the President of the St. George’s University’s Women in Medicine chapter in St. George, Grenada where she expanded relationships with the community and worked towards educating women and helping the youth. She is also a member of the Gender Equity Task Force and Sex and Gender Health Collaborative Committees within the American Medical Women’s Association. When she is not pursuing medicine, you can find her with her friends and family on different road trips and adventures exploring the world.
Vashti Price, MS3
Vashti Price is a third-year medical student at St. George’s University. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, a Master’s in Biological Sciences from Alcorn State University, and a Master’s in Health Sciences from Meharry Medical College. With a strong passion for public health and health equity, Vashti has dedicated much of her time over the years to volunteering with underserved populations, including individuals experiencing homelessness and children in need. Her commitment to service continues through her involvement with the American Medical Women’s Association, where she serves on the Gender Equity Task Force and the Sex & Gender Health Collaborative Committees. Vashti is particularly interested in the intersection of medicine, public health, and community outreach. Outside of her academic and clinical pursuits, she enjoys spending time with friends and family, attending festivals, exploring new cities, and winding down with a good Netflix series.