Growing up in Spanish Town Jamaica, Jermaine Brown became passionate about neuroscience at the age of six, when he suffered a traumatic syncope at age 6. Learning about the conditions that caused him to faint led to his fascination with the human brain. However, Brown’s parents are uneducated and were unable to get him the resources to facilitate his curiosity. As a result, he read all he could about the brain from the local newspaper and whatever books he could find at the local library. Reading the newspaper articles, Jermaine quickly became familiar with the names and symptoms of the many and diverse diseases that befall the organ and led to a significant degeneration in the victims’ quality of life, and in many cases, their death. Brown notes the many pleas he read in the local newspaper to seek help to fund and source the needed surgery that was unavailable in his country. This spurred him in the direction of medicine with the desire to become a surgeon with a specialty in neurosurgery.
Now, Brown is excited at the possibility of his dream becoming a reality with his recent acceptance to Columbia University’s competitive Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program. However, he faces the adversity—albeit one that he is well familiar with—of affording the hefty price tag of an education at Columbia University. Nevertheless, Jermaine is determined to succeed. He claims that he has had many doors closed on him but the encouragement he has received along the way has motivated him to continue. Jermaine was finalist for the 2017 Jamaican Rhodes Scholarship, which would have led him to Oxford University, to pursue relevant premedical training. Since then, he has redoubled his efforts to realize his dream of becoming a surgeon. These efforts have culminated with his acceptance to Columbia University.
Jermaine has begun a crowdfunding campaign to help him afford the cost of the program and living in New York for its duration. He states that participating in the program is very important to him as it will be the first step in actualizing a career as a surgeon. You can view his crowdfunding campaign at the link below for more detail about the program, Brown’s need, and a copy of his acceptance letter. He hopes to begin the program in January of 2018.
You can support Jermaine Brown’s efforts at: youcaring.com/pathtomedicine
