By: Brittany Brooks

This week, we’re shining the spotlight on one of Nashville’s health care professionals who’s fighting to save lives during a global pandemic. Sheream Reed is currently a first-year Dental Student at Meharry Medical College. He’s been volunteering through Meharry’s COVID assessment site since May. “I volunteered my services, and Meharry was looking for volunteers [since] they were understaffed. I stepped up eagerly to volunteer and contribute and hopefully [help] stipend the disease in the area,” Reed said.

While volunteering, Reed has learned how to take swabs and samples. He’s also learned how to treat people who potentially had COVID-19. But, most importantly, he says he’s learned how to control traffic. This has been a very frustrating time for many and Reed takes pride in calming people down during this time of trouble. “I think this is invaluable experience being in a pandemic. This is unlike any time we’ve ever been through, and if we have something else in the future, I’ll know how to deal with it,” Reed said.

Reed knew that he had a passion for the health care field since he was a little boy. His mother was a dental assistant when he was in high school, so he would shadow his mother’s colleagues at Albert Einstein’s Medical Center, in Philadelphia. He has enrolled as a health policy scholar with the intentions of learning about policies and how to influence different laws that play a role in healthcare.

When asked about an idea that he would like to implement into the health care system, he focused on the lack of Medicaid Expansion here in the local area. Reed says, “I would like to investigate why that is, especially considering it can help people of color.”

Reed has accumulated hundreds of volunteering hours through the Meharry COVID assessment sites. Meharry is expected to continue its testing and Reed says he’ll continue to volunteer until this pandemic is under control.