bean," the physician says dur- Texas. "In Caribbean first-generation families, you can be a lawyer, a doc- tor, or an engineer." calls, "Some parents would give their kids $1 for every A. And my parents would look at me and say, `Why should we pay you for what you are supposed to be doing? Wait, what is that? Bs--what are Bs?' My father went to the University of the West Indies. He did his law degree in the U.S. The only schools they had heard of were Yale and Harvard and Duke. I had never heard of anywhere else." Yale University, Dr. Flash visited an AIDS hospice, Bread & Roses, and a lifelong mission began. Now assistant medical director of HIV Prevention Houston, Dr. Flash is also an assistant professor of medicine in the section of infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine. wanted to do something with AIDS or cancer, and after working with the AIDS hospice director, I knew that is what I wanted to do." wanted to remain on the East Coast. Once she established residence in New Jersey, the in-state tuition at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School was a plus. tion, they had research, and they had a commitment to working in under- served communities and working with the homeless. That commitment was very important to me," she says. health care assessment from what is now the Rutgers School of Public Health. star," says Patricia Whitley-Williams, MD, professor and former chair, Department of Pediatrics; and chief, division of allergy, immunology, and infectious diseases. Williams says. "She worked with our pediatric infectious disease division on a project that looked at how many pregnant women were being screened for HIV, part of a nationwide initiative to identify pregnant women who were positive, and which would allow them to receive HIV treatment and prevent transmission from mother to child." says Sunanda Gaur, MD, professor of pediatrics and director, Robert Wood Johnson AIDS Program. "As a third- and fourth-year medical student, she worked with me on a project related to rapid HIV testing among women in labor, which was eventually pub- lished. I remember her as being very |