It has been 34 years of experience over the lifetime as a resident of Chicago’s Southside that have shaped the career of Dr. Abdullah Hasan Pratt, MD. “He attributes this commitment to his childhood experiences, witnessing the poor health conditions, premature deaths and day-to-day struggles from a lack of access to proper healthcare by the people he cared about,” said his staff.
Dr. Pratt had just finished his first year of medical school when his older brother was gunned down just a few hundred feet from the family home. Two years later, a pivotal point in his career where he directed his actions toward advocating for a new Level One Trauma Center for Chicago’s Southside. “It would be the experiences he gained during this work with both the protesting community organizations as well as UChicago administration, that would fuel Dr. Pratt’s desire to have a career within emergency medicine, ultimately leading to the founding of a Medical Careers Exposure and Emergency Preparedness Initiative (MedCEEP) and Trauma Recovery and Prevention of Violence (TRAP Violence).
Because MedCEEP’s programming is so unique, it falls into the categories of education and training, healthcare and social service. The mission of the firm is to address the problems of poor healthcare, low health literacy, violence, lack of access to quality healthcare providers and systematic injustices that have plagued communities for generations. MedCEEP focuses on empowering underrepresented minority youth to become trained in recognizing and responding to the most prevalent life-threatening emergency scenarios while being exposed to health-related careers, in hopes of increasing representation in the field of medicine.
“Dr. Pratt is a true anomaly in his industry,” said his colleagues. “It is rare that you find a physician working to solve some our nation’s biggest challenges, in the same communities he and his family suffered in, all while building an academic career at one of the nation’s premier research institutions.”
As a mentor, Dr. Pratt has built in opportunities for college students to serve as interns, medical students to serve as volunteer staff and resident training physicians serving in leadership roles where each are both mentoring and being mentored by one another. “What truly delineates Dr. Pratt’s titan level of ambition is seen with his work partnering with the entities that garner the most influence over high-risk youth,” said his staff. “What has been truly amazing to witness has been his ability to leverage these relationships, engender a sense of trust from these individuals and even partner with them to reduce violence and bring awareness to gun safety and response during traumatic emergencies.”
For his inspiring contributions to the community, his staff and youth at risk, Dr. Pratt has been named a titan.
