A national television audience learned about Aaron Palmer this month because he is a rarity.

Palmer, 33, a graduate of Akrons East high school and Walsh University in North Canton, is one of relatively few Black doctors and one of even fewer training to be a neurosurgeon.

Palmer, who graduated from East in 2005 and had a bumpy road to get where he is, is a "minority within a minority," CBS news correspondent Adriana Diaz said in her report for the "CBS This Morning" show.

Diaz noted that the number of Black males attending U.S. medical schools has dropped since the 1980s.

"I often get mistaken for whoever works at the hospital, [every kind of worker] but a doctor," Palmer said in an interview with the Beacon Journal.

He spoke from Chicago, where he works at a downtown hospital. Hes in his fourth year of a seven-year residency program for those training to be neurosurgeons. The program is part of Northwestern Universitys Feinberg School of Medicine.

Palmers journey started in Akron, where he grew up in a struggling neighborhood on the east side.

"There were seven of us [his parents and their five children] in a two-bedroom house," Palmer said.

His mother, Amy, now retired, was an LPN and then a registered nurse. His father, Hollis, who died in 2010, was a tree trimmer for Summit County.

The house was affordable and it was next door to Hollis mother, Amy said, explaining why the family stayed in the home. Amy lives in New Franklin these days, where the family moved in 2004.

While Aaron Palmer was in high school in Akron, he had no dream of going to medical school.

"I had no idea of what degree to get," Palmer said. "It sounds very foolish, but my 18-year-old mindset at the time was to get a scholarship so I could play football at a university."

He ended up at Walsh University after a brief stint playing football at a school out of state.

At Walsh, he barely played a season of football before he lost interest. He wasnt interested in applying himself to his studies, either, after choosing chemistry as a major because it "sounded cool."

His GPA reflected his lack of interest, hovering around a 1.5-2.0 for his first three years at Walsh.

Something clicked

In 2009, "something clicked," Palmer said, as his dad was growing sicker from esophageal cancer from which he died in 2010.

That year, Palmer had shadowed a Black surgeon at Summa Akron City Hospital for a couple of days and glimpsed a possible future for himself.

The surgeon, Palmer said, "reminded me of my dad [in the way] people really looked up to him and he helped people out."

Palmers father, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Navy, was a leader in the familys neighborhood, devoted to his family and helped lead the East Pee Wee Football program.

"He was a mentor and a male figure to a lot of people who didnt have that," Palmer said. "Hed break up fights in the street. Hed fix appliances for people."

"My husband said a child does better than their father and their mother," Amy Palmer said.

"Im proud of all my children," she said of her four sons and one daughter.

Around this time, Ann Caplea, a professor at Walsh, reentered Palmers life.

Palmer had earlier taken an anatomy and physiology course from Caplea and had not done well, earning a D.

Caplea, director of human anatomy at the school, advised pre-med students at the time. Palmer sought her out, asking her if medical school was attainable.

"I knew she would be honest and tell me if I had a chance," Palmer said in a talk he gave this month to Walsh freshmen.

Caplea, who has kept in touch with Palmer, recalled that life-changing meeting.

"I really felt like he was capable [of getting in] if he put his mind to it," she said.

Palmer "would have moments of brilliance" in the class in which he got a D, she explained. "I thought, You know, he knows this [material]."

Palmer needed motivation, Caplea said.

"Thats what happens with students sometimes, they dont have the motivation, and they just do enough to get the minimum," she said. "And that was Aaron before he decided he wanted to go to medical school.

She helped Palmer lay out a plan. For three semesters over a period of more than two years, Palmer loaded up on classes. He retook ones in which he had done poorly while also taking needed prerequisites.

He had to drop out at times to earn money to continue. To raise cash, he and his older brother, Timothy, who now owns a used-car dealership in Tallmadge, bought and sold used cars.

Finally, in 2011, Palmer graduated from Walsh with a 3.1 GPA.

Exposed to neurosurgery

His senior year, he applied to numerous medical schools and received many rejection letters. Boonshoft School of Medicine at Wright State University accepted him, awarding him a scholarship that substantially reduced his tuition.

He laminated his acceptance letter to medical school and placed it on his fathers grave.

He vowed to not repeat his initial performance at Walsh and buckled down from the start.

In his third year at Wright State, Palmer was in a clinical rotation when a neurosurgeon let him assist in a surgery. Palmer was hooked.

"It was the fist time I saw the brain," Palmer said, recalling the surgery on the brain of a comatose man who had been in a car accident.

"We went to patients room the next day the guy is there changing the channels on his TV, watching the news. I thought, Oh wow, this is what I need to do."

But there was yet another hurdle ahead.

In their fourth year of medical school, students go through a process to be "matched" with residency programs. Palmer failed to land a match with a program in neurosurgery, a highly competitive specialty.

But Palmer wasnt defeated.

He spent a year working in general surgery at a hospital in Michigan and tried again.

"I felt like I had let everybody down," Palmer said. "I felt I had come too far to not truly do more" more clinical research to bolster his application, more networking and more applying.

He got accepted at Northwestern Universitys Feinberg School of Medicine and works at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

Giving back

"I have stumbled every step of the way," he said.

Now, he said, he feels obligated to give back to other struggling students, helping them study, serving as an example of what can be accomplished despite myriad struggles.

He speaks out about the lack of racial diversity in medicine.

Only about 5% of physicians identify as Black, while African Americans account for 13% of the countrys population. Only 6% of graduates at U.S. medical schools are Black, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

"We have a lack of role models," he said.

"The only reason Im here is because people reached out and said, Hey, I can help you. Thats how we can really make a huge impact on peoples lives."

More Black doctors would mean better health outcomes for Black patients, Palmer said, echoing studies that show theres a greater sense of trust and communication between Black physicians and patients.

Health inequality is playing out in the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic, health experts note, pointing out the disproportionate number of Blacks, as well as other minorities, and the poor who are at risk from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

When he completes his residency in Chicago, Palmer would like to return to Northeast Ohio. Hes intrigued with the possibility of combining medicine and public policy.

"A lot of the issues [of racial and socioeconomic disparities in medicine] they've been politicized heavily. I dont think these are political issues. I just think these are human rights issues."

Beacon Journal reporter Katie Byard can be reached at kbyard@thebeaconjournal.com.

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East grad overcomes challenges on journey to be a neurosurgeon - Akron Beacon Journal