In addition to a lifelong desire to help people by becoming a doctor, Jessica DeLong got the travel bug when she was young – which explains her double major in Biology and Spanish (UVA ’07). She did a semester abroad in Costa Rica, immersing herself in the language and culture.
In medical school at EVMS and residency at the Lahey Clinic, followed by a fellowship in adult and pediatric reconstructive urology at EVMS, she found a career that could give her the opportunity to realize both of her passions. She wasted no time pursing them: “When I finished my fellowship, I wanted to have an international focus, so before beginning formal practice, I took six months to travel and do medical work abroad,” Dr. DeLong says. “I initially intended to go to West Africa, but with the outbreak of the ebola virus, my plans were cancelled.” Instead, she spent two months in China (where she studied Mandarin), and later traveled to Ho Chi Minh City to work with IVUMed partners on reconstructive urology.
“Within reconstructive urology, we can do such a variety of procedures, helping men and women, adults and kids alike,” she says. “We have great technology here, but many of these surgeries can be done with extremely limited equipment, which makes them very translatable.” She’s been in such basic operating suites often, lately working in the Dominican Republic, where the need is great. “There aren’t any surgeons trained to do reconstructive urology in the DR,” she explains. “For many of our male patients who have been unable to work due to urethral trauma, we can get them back to being productive members of society by repairing their injuries; and for women, we treat everything from female prolapse to incontinence or congenital anomaly. Many of these patients have experienced years of disability prior to our evaluation.”
She’s been invited back to Shanghai to collaborate with surgeons there on female reconstructive work. It’s especially exciting, she says, because “I’ve wanted to develop a relationship with a hospital there because of the opportunity to do collaborative research. They treat a huge number of people, and I thought that if we could get our institutions together we could really do some good research.”
But for the most part, she’ll concentrate her efforts in the Dominican Republic for the near future, both because there’s such a huge need, and because, she says, “the DR is the perfect location to try to set up a program; they have the infrastructure in order to be able to benefit from additional training. With my colleague Dr. Ramón Virasoro, we are establishing a Reconstructive Urology fellowship in the DR, which will be the first surgical fellowship in the Caribbean. We’ve had tremendous support and close collaboration with Dr. Charles Horton and Physicians for Peace, and have identified our first urology fellow candidate, who’ll come on board on July 1st.”
Built into the program is a model of sustainability. Dr. DeLong explains: “If we’re successful in the Dominican Republic, the program will be translatable to other resource-poor health care environments. We’re going to be training fellows, and once those fellows have graduated, they’ll perpetuate that program, so the idea is that within five years, they will be self-sufficient.”
Which will leave her free to identify other places to go, other patients to treat, and other surgeons to train. And of course, other languages to learn and cultures to explore.
