Wheaton Alum Goes from Watson Fellowship to Med School

Kelvin Ampem-Darko, a Wheaton College alumnus and member of the 49th class of Thomas J. Watson Fellows, has begun a journey as a medical student after returning from his trip around the world. At Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, he plans to pursue a career in specialized and surgical care dispensation in low-resource settings.

Focused on his neuroscience studies at Wheaton College, Kelvin applied for the Watson Fellowship back in 2017. He wanted the opportunity to explore one question: “Is there a right way to care for one another?” This question—one he says he asked himself multiple times while living in Ghana, where he was born—brought him to Zimbabwe that summer. He then traveled to India, Bolivia and Senegal.

“I want to find the area where the smallest change can make a significant impact.”

“During my Watson year, I worked and often lived with caregivers in different settings to understand the emotional and logistical challenges they face in their day-to-day lives,” Kelvin says.

In India and Africa, he often found himself witnessing people who needed surgical care but did not have immediate help available. Kelvin learned that direct caregivers’ resourcefulness enabled them to overcome many of these challenges.

Once back in the U.S., Kelvin began classes at Icahn School of Medicine. He was initially interested in global public health, but after his Watson year experiences, he felt like he needed to push the envelope further.

“My primary goal while I am here at Sinai is to find the area in surgical medicine where the smallest change can make a significant impact on traditionally undeserved patient populations,” he says.

Kelvin wants to learn more about unmet surgical needs internationally, and hopes to eventually help provide surgeries for underserved patients in the U.S.