Spotlight
Profile Patricia Finn: pulmonary passion “What I accomplish is not as important as what others accomplish after me” says Patricia Finn. “I am rewarded when those I’ve trained or touched in some way achieve or surpass their goals. I’m always looking for my replacement.” It sounds great in theory, but you only need to talk to her for a few minutes to realise that, as far as finding a like-for-like replacement goes, it’s never going to happen. The new President of the American Thoracic Society (ATS) and head of medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Finn is definitely a one-off. Bursting with passion and blessed with an ability to talk rings around anyone, she’s a formidable communicator across the wide range of topics and interests that fall within the purview of the ATS. But it’s when she talks about inequality, disparities, and lack of access to healthcare that she’s at her most powerful and convincing. When it comes to tracing the origin of her consuming desire for social justice, something she says is embedded in her “core DNA”, Finn is in no doubt that it sprung first from her parents, and her upbringing in the colourful New York City neighbourhood of Alphabet City. Irish immigrants with what Finn describes as a third grade education, her parents were “very committed to making a difference”, she says. The greatest hardship, Finn recalls, was the unexpected loss of one of her elder brothers to illness. And although Finn is clear that there was no question of individual or institutional culpability, it’s clear that a lack of access to adequate healthcare played its part. “It was a defining moment”, she says. “I think that was probably one of the ignition points that got me really thinking about equity and access to healthcare”. Finn had always had vague thoughts of going into medicine, tempered by misgivings about the costs of training as a physician, but finally decided to make the leap after finishing her undergraduate degree in 1976. Graduating from New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1980 and going on to do her internship and residency at the city’s Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, Finn immersed herself in “helping folks with enormously different needs”. It was at this point that Finn, whose previous inclination had been towards general practice, started to realise that she could satisfy her commitment to “serving the underserved” in more specialised areas. “I was taking care of a woman in the Bronx who had really severe asthma and had a lot of difficulty with her disease. I felt that even as a student I could make a difference”, she recalls. “It dawned on me just how key breathing well is, how key the lungs are, and how poorly understood, so I started to shift my thinking away from general practice”.
www.thelancet.com/respiratory Vol 1 May 2013
Her new focus on lung disease led her away from New York to Boston, and a Harvard fellowship studying pulmonary and critical care medicine. There, Finn’s perspective was altered again by an encounter with a patient, this time with interstitial lung disease. “It seemed like there was so much immunology that was unknown, and there was a dearth of information regarding not only how the immune system affects the lungs but also every other organ. I became fascinated, I mean really fascinated, and went back, retooled, and reread”, she recalls. “In the same way as effecting social change is imbedded in my personality, I saw that there were other ways to make a difference. I decided to spend some time in an immunology lab in Harvard on what was effectively an immunology fellowship, and just became so thrilled about the fact that we could start to understand some of the basics.” It was around this time in the early 1990s that Finn had her first contact with the ATS. After successfully competing for funding from the National Institutes of Health and establishing her own laboratory at Harvard, she had come to “really appreciate the importance of working in a group”, she says, “but I didn’t know whether I needed join an organisation. So I really need to thank the people who came before me who said ‘Patricia, you need to get involved’, and I really have to thank a lot of mentors who were so helpful to me without helping themselves, and who guided me towards a professional organisation which is so much more than just a professional organisation”. ATS is an organisation that “strengthens and gives voice” says Finn. “It’s a place where you can focus on research, how you treat patients, but it’s not just for physicians, it’s very inclusive, and there is tremendous advocacy”. Finn was elected to the executive committee in 2010, and immediately set about constructing a framework for making health equality in respiratory medicine a central part of the ATS mission, just as she has done more broadly as chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Now, with the platform of the ATS presidency, she is all set to send out “a call to arms”, she says. “We really have the strength to tackle some of these inequalities and disparities and put strategies in place”, she argues. “Our next generation is pushing us to make a difference.”
David Holmes
195
Profile Patricia Finn: pulmonary passion “What I accomplish is not as important as what others accomplish after me” says Patricia Finn. “I am rewarded when those I’ve trained or touched in some way achieve or surpass their goals. I’m always looking for my replacement.” It sounds great in theory, but you only need to talk to her for a few minutes to realise that, as far as finding a like-for-like replacement goes, it’s never going to happen. The new President of the American Thoracic Society (ATS) and head of medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Finn is definitely a one-off. Bursting with passion and blessed with an ability to talk rings around anyone, she’s a formidable communicator across the wide range of topics and interests that fall within the purview of the ATS. But it’s when she talks about inequality, disparities, and lack of access to healthcare that she’s at her most powerful and convincing. When it comes to tracing the origin of her consuming desire for social justice, something she says is embedded in her “core DNA”, Finn is in no doubt that it sprung first from her parents, and her upbringing in the colourful New York City neighbourhood of Alphabet City. Irish immigrants with what Finn describes as a third grade education, her parents were “very committed to making a difference”, she says. The greatest hardship, Finn recalls, was the unexpected loss of one of her elder brothers to illness. And although Finn is clear that there was no question of individual or institutional culpability, it’s clear that a lack of access to adequate healthcare played its part. “It was a defining moment”, she says. “I think that was probably one of the ignition points that got me really thinking about equity and access to healthcare”. Finn had always had vague thoughts of going into medicine, tempered by misgivings about the costs of training as a physician, but finally decided to make the leap after finishing her undergraduate degree in 1976. Graduating from New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1980 and going on to do her internship and residency at the city’s Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, Finn immersed herself in “helping folks with enormously different needs”. It was at this point that Finn, whose previous inclination had been towards general practice, started to realise that she could satisfy her commitment to “serving the underserved” in more specialised areas. “I was taking care of a woman in the Bronx who had really severe asthma and had a lot of difficulty with her disease. I felt that even as a student I could make a difference”, she recalls. “It dawned on me just how key breathing well is, how key the lungs are, and how poorly understood, so I started to shift my thinking away from general practice”.
www.thelancet.com/respiratory Vol 1 May 2013
Her new focus on lung disease led her away from New York to Boston, and a Harvard fellowship studying pulmonary and critical care medicine. There, Finn’s perspective was altered again by an encounter with a patient, this time with interstitial lung disease. “It seemed like there was so much immunology that was unknown, and there was a dearth of information regarding not only how the immune system affects the lungs but also every other organ. I became fascinated, I mean really fascinated, and went back, retooled, and reread”, she recalls. “In the same way as effecting social change is imbedded in my personality, I saw that there were other ways to make a difference. I decided to spend some time in an immunology lab in Harvard on what was effectively an immunology fellowship, and just became so thrilled about the fact that we could start to understand some of the basics.” It was around this time in the early 1990s that Finn had her first contact with the ATS. After successfully competing for funding from the National Institutes of Health and establishing her own laboratory at Harvard, she had come to “really appreciate the importance of working in a group”, she says, “but I didn’t know whether I needed join an organisation. So I really need to thank the people who came before me who said ‘Patricia, you need to get involved’, and I really have to thank a lot of mentors who were so helpful to me without helping themselves, and who guided me towards a professional organisation which is so much more than just a professional organisation”. ATS is an organisation that “strengthens and gives voice” says Finn. “It’s a place where you can focus on research, how you treat patients, but it’s not just for physicians, it’s very inclusive, and there is tremendous advocacy”. Finn was elected to the executive committee in 2010, and immediately set about constructing a framework for making health equality in respiratory medicine a central part of the ATS mission, just as she has done more broadly as chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Now, with the platform of the ATS presidency, she is all set to send out “a call to arms”, she says. “We really have the strength to tackle some of these inequalities and disparities and put strategies in place”, she argues. “Our next generation is pushing us to make a difference.”
David Holmes
195
