Carrying the torch of his slain brother, a Chicago ER doctor struggles against the violence around him
Health disparities are not just the stuff of dry statistics and academic studies for University of Chicago ER physician Abdullah Pratt; they are his life.
CHICAGO — Abdullah Hassan Pratt is giving a tour of a sheep heart that sits, heavy and sodden, in his hand. Dressed all in black, with his Jordans and easy manner, Pratt doesn’t look all that different from his audience: dozens of teenagers from this city’s roughest and poorest neighborhoods.
One student raises a tentative hand, utterly confused by how blood travels through the heart. The grayish organs lying limp on tables in front of the students look nothing like the crisp diagram marked with bright red and blue arrows projected on a screen behind Pratt in the high-tech simulation center at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. “Look, all you need to know is where you are,” says Pratt. “If I dropped you off at Checkers, you’d know how to get to school, right? It’s just like that. So start at the superior vena cava, and give me the pathway.”
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