Author: Adib Rabbani

Bio: I am an EMT, research assistant, and hospice volunteer—moving through medicine like a tide trapped between undertows of urgency, hope, and uncertainty. My painting shows a figure working in a laboratory, surrounded by the equipment of science: glassware, forceps, labels scribbled in a hurry. It's both self-portrait and portrait of this moment in medicine.

Commentary: In the lab, I study how cells move, how genes are rewritten, how ideas take form in numbers. As an EMT, I ride through cities, sirens cutting through stillness, each call a reminder of life's fragility and resilience. And as a hospice volunteer, I sit with quietness at the bedside of those nearing the end of their journey, holding hands, hearing stories that begin and end with love.

I think about the theme of Movement constantly. Healthcare is moving at breakneck speed—AI, CRISPR, telehealth—but so much of it is tangled in systems that move against us: budget cuts that leave community clinics scrambling, political decisions that erase our patients’ rights, the quiet ways hospitals tell queer and trans patients they don’t belong. As a brown trainee, I’ve learned to move sideways, not just forward. I navigate around prejudice, find ways to hold space for others who feel unwelcome in medicine’s rigid walls.

Do I progress linearly? No. My path isn't a line; it's a curve, doubles back on itself and sometimes spirals. But in that motion is power-- learning to change gears, take a rest, redefine what health might be. Being an EMT, a researcher, and a hospice volunteer means holding both the immediacy of crisis and the slow, careful work of healing. It means moving toward a future where medicine is not just a science, but a practice of care, justice, and solidarity.

This is my question: Can we construct a field that begins to move with our communities, rather than against them? Can we hold space for those of us who are moving in ways that medicine does not anticipate?

I believe that we can. And that we must.