Issue link: https://trevordayschool.uberflip.com/i/1295455
Sasha Deutsch-Link, M.D. '06 Physician 5 5 T R E V O R D AY S C H O O L n S U M M E R 2 0 1 9 – 2 0 2 0 Opposite: Sasha and Luna, her Great Dane. She credits Luna as being "a source of reprieve during coronavirus and has seen me through my entire medical training."; is page: As Student Council President, Sasha was emcee at Commencement in 2006 and announced that year's student speakers and performers. Although I graduated from Trevor Day School almost 15 years ago, the educational experience it provided continues to have a profound impact on my career trajectory and the way that I interact with the world. Trevor offered me what most schools did not in that time—a flexible, supportive, and tailored approach to education. From a young age, I craved complexity and rigor in the classroom. Teachers at Trevor were able to adapt learning opportunities to fit these needs, and challenged me to draw connections between what we learned and the community around us. It was in this environment that I fell in love with lifelong learning. After graduating Trevor in 2006, I attended Brown University. It was here that my love of learning took direction. I majored in Community Health, which is a multidisciplinary field involving public health, sociology, and anthropology. Over my four years at Brown, I learned about how structural inequality impacts health and human disease, and I decided to pursue medical school so that one day, I could address the injustices I had learned about. I completed medical school at Yale University and internal medicine residency at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During residency, I saw in concrete detail how structural inequality and poverty lead to poor health outcomes. It was no longer an abstract idea from a book or table in a scientific paper, but rather life and death or misery and sorrow right before my eyes. What could I do? How could I respond? It was these experiences that drew me to addiction medicine, where social, economic, and racial injustices converge in one field. After graduating residency, I completed a fellowship in addiction medicine at the University of Maryland from which I graduated in June of 2020. During fellowship, I worked at the university's West Baltimore methadone and suboxone clinic, detoxification unit, and as an addiction consultant in the hospital. is was possibly one of the most challenging years for medicine, me, and the patients I worked with as the coronavirus pandemic spread through the country and into my clinic. e injustices I had learned about and studied for so many years were uncovered in ways I could not have imagined. e virus was initially spread by the wealthy as they flew across the world, vacationing or engaging in global commerce. e wealthy then retreated to their large homes to quarantine as the virus continued to spread. e virus tore through our most at-risk populations and disproportionately affected my patients, many of whom lived in homeless shelters, transitional or group housing, crowded living conditions, or in the criminal justice system. Others are essential workers in fields that did not receive priority for protective equipment, and suffered large outbreaks at work. I saw this occurring in juxtaposition to my parents and family friends, who retreated to their homes or fled New York City to second homes, and teleworked. ese disparities are clearly socioeconomic, but also involve unsettling racial disparities because of our country's history of racism. In this environment, I had to adapt and learn to practice in a terrifying new normal. Trevor had instilled in me adaptability and confidence from a young age, and although I was admittedly terrified, I used this confidence and these skills to educate myself and adjust my practice style to fit the new world in which we were all living. I continued to provide the best care I could for my patients, whose lives were even more impacted and upended than my own. e media constantly focused on the tragedy that healthcare workers interfaced with, but seemed to neglect my