By Nelson A. King
Akya Myrie grew up in Canarsie,
Brooklyn after her mother
migrated to the United States
in the 1980s from Jamaica and
witnessed her family’s search
for better medical services
for her older brother, who is
described as “profoundly mentally
disabled.”
While growing up in Brooklyn,
Myrie, 26, learned that,
though medical care was better
in the US, her, single parent,
mother and brother still struggled
to access quality medicine
and culturally-competent care.
This inequity, while leading
Myrie to pursue a career
in medicine, instilled in her a
drive to serve vulnerable communities
and individuals who
are chronically underserved.
Myrie graduated, in 2012,
from Leon M. Goldstein High
School for the Sciences on the
campus of Kingsborough Community
College in Brighton
Beach, Brooklyn.
The Great Mossaic
She then attended college at
Stony Brook University, graduating
in 2016 with a bachelor’s
degree in health science.
Afterwards, Myrie completed
Caribbean L 18 ife, JUNE 25-JULY 1, 2021
a state-funded Diversity
in Medicine program at the
Jacobs School of Medicine and
Biological Sciences at the University
of Buffalo, run by the
Associated Medical Schools of
New York (AMSNY).
Myrie said the program —
which guarantees medical
school admission on graduation
and requires recipients to
return to New York to practice
medicine in an underserved
community – prepared her academically
and emotionally for
medical school, and to become
a doctor.
After completing the postbaccalaureate
program at the
University of Buffalo, Myrie
enrolled at the State University
of New York, Downstate Medical
Center’s College of Medicine,
where she was inducted into
the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor
Society, the highest achievement
in medical school.
In medical school, Dr. Myrie
said she was very fortunate
to receive AMSNY’s Diversity
in Medicine scholarship four
times; and that she started various
community service initiatives,
participated in several
research projects on health
disparities in transplantation,
kidney disease, prostate cancer
and bladder cancer, and joined
a team to aid in a medical mission
to Jamaica.
Next month, Dr. Myrie said
she will begin her residency,
for six years, in urology at the
Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.
She also said she is excited to
return home after completing
her residency to work with an
underserved community as a
urologist, describing her commitment
to serve as an honor,
rather than a requirement.
“Growing up in Brooklyn,
as the daughter of Jamaican
Jamaican-American Dr. Akya Myrie. AMSNY/Akya Myrie
immigrants, I saw people who
looked like me suffer from
higher rates of asthma, diabetes
and other chronic illnesses
more than their white counterparts,”
Dr. Myrie told Caribbean
Life in an interview.
“New Yorkers have always
had a gap in health and healthcare,
based on race and ethnicity;
and, in the past year,
I’ve seen COVID-19 widened
those gaps,” she added. “People
of color, like me, have experienced
the highest death rates
from this pandemic. That is
why I feel a sense of urgency to
start helping patients.”
Jamaican American student defies
odds, becomes medical doctor
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