46 Patricia Bath

Patricia Bath

Time period:

1942-2019

Subject:

Medicine – Ophthalmology

Biography:

Dr. Patricia Bath was a humanitarian and ophthalmologist born in Manhattan in 1942. Her father emigrated from Trinidad, and her ancestry includes African American and Cherokee history as well. Her father was the first Black subway operator for the New York City subway system. Dr. Bath’s parents always encouraged her to be exploratory and curious from a young age. Interested in science from a young age, she participated in science summer programs during high school (1959) where she conducted a cancer research project to predict the growth of cancerous tissue.

Summary of their contributions:

Dr. Bath would go on to pioneer the development of the use of lasers as a therapy for cataract surgery and held five patents. She was the first African American woman to hold a medical patent in the United States when she obtained her patent for a laser in 1988. In 1974 she became an assistant professor at Charles Drew University and UCLA, the next year she joined the Department of Ophthalmology – and was the first woman to do so at UCLA. In 1976, she co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness. She founded the institute due to the success of her community ophthalmology  work, where routine eye care was offered to patients with difficulties accessing the medical system. She started this work because she determined that Black patients in her care at Harlem Hospital had visual impairments and preventable blindness more frequently than white patients – which she attributed to discrepancies in how accessible the medical system is for Black Americans.

Integration with the BC Secondary Science Curriculum:

Dr. Bath’s work would fit into the BC curriculum for Anatomy and Physiology 12 when learning about different organ systems, and Science 8 during the Optics unit. Sometimes this is when the Sheep’s eye dissection is done. Discussing Dr. Bath’s work on laser eye surgery would fit nicely here.

• The following curricular competencies apply to Dr. Bath’s work:
  • Generate and introduce new or refined ideas when problem solving
  • Consider social, ethical, and environmental implications of the findings from their own and others’ investigations
  • Demonstrate an awareness of assumptions and bias in their own work and secondary sources

References:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/obituaries/dr-patricia-bath-dead.

htmlhttps://drpatriciabath.com/about/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Patricia-Bath

https://apnews.ca/biography/patricia-bath/