I grew up in what we call Calumet Heights neighborhood, it's just a Southeast side of Chicago,

you know, painted by violence and health inequities at a time where it was not nice to live

in that neighborhood, at a time where it was very dangerous, where it was very game-written

and yes, there's still a lot of violence today in Woodland, nothing like just 20 years

ago when I was a child growing up in these neighborhoods and having to watch out for myself.

On a cold and rainy winter's day, I went to Chicago to see a young man named Abdullah

Pratt, big beard, thick black plastic glasses, built like a linebacker.

What was your path? What did you decide you wanted to go to medicine and what did you decide

you wanted to pick emergency medicine? So I think I wanted to be a doctor since the time

that I was a child. I remember having the Fisher Price bag and Christmas and, you know,

being three, four years old and stuff. I grew up in the museums, so the Museum of Science and

Industry was a sanctuary for me. As a child, the Shed Aquarium, I did my first dissection of a squid

at the age of like seven or eight. Those things fueled a passion for science, a passion for anatomy,

and after growing up in a completely 100% African-American community, I was in programs where I'd

be the only African-American, but I was winning awards for being the best. So it taught me that I

could compete and that I could make change. And when I was a senior in high school, I was working as

a temp, um, deliver of grants at UChicago's campus. Really good job. I was making like 17 an hour

for that summer. Yeah, it was with high school and all, man, I didn't make that much money again

until I was a doctor. So I just let you know how that works. But I remember asking people like,

hey, I live in woodland a lot. I remember a lot and there's a lot of violence, a lot of social

inequities. You ride your bike or walk two blocks and it's this beautiful campus. But you go and ask

these heads of departments, hey, who's here fighting for the little people two blocks away where my

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