NEWARK, NJ — When Saul Bautista joined the U.S. Army, he had no idea he’d end up trading bombs and bullets for healing and hope. But that’s what witnessing the “carnage of war” can do to a person, the Newark resident says.
The tragic epiphany came while he was serving as a lab tech at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, the largest U.S. military hospital outside the United States. There, while helping to treat soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bautista encountered a critically wounded patient freshly airlifted from a war zone.
And it changed who he was forever.
“He looked like he was hit by a pretty bad IED,” Bautista somberly recalled in a recent Rutgers blog post. “From the waist down, he was gone. His legs were gone, one arm was gone, and half his body was burned.”
“It was a defining experience,” Bautista said. “I thought about the amazing group of nurses and medics working with physicians and giving this guy a chance… that’s when a light bulb went on.”
Growing up in New Jersey’s largest city as the son of working-class, Dominican parents, Bautista discovered his love for science at an early age. He’d often wonder what it would be like to be a doctor. But as the tenacious youngster got older, he began to notice a perplexing roadblock to his dreams… he didn’t know anyone that looked like himself in the medical field.
It wasn’t just a lack of diversity among his neighborhood doctors that ultimately led Bautista to wonder if the scales were imbalanced in the inner city. It was a conspicuous absence of things as simple as fresh fruit and vegetables, a resource that families in the suburbs often take for granted.
“I had no idea what kale was until my first year of medical school,” Bautista said. “Kohlrabi and bok choy? I didn’t even know that they existed.”
After graduating high school in 2004, Bautista joined the U.S. Army, where he eventually had his life-changing encounter. When his tour of duty was up in 2008 – eager to get a fresh start in the medical field – he enrolled at Rutgers University-Newark to study biology, taking a part-time job as an interpretive assistant at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City to help make ends meet.
At the science center, part of his job included working with inner-city children who came from neighborhoods where there weren’t any farmer’s markets… just fast food restaurants. It was a throwback to his own childhood, a reminder that zip codes can have a huge impact on health and education.
“I figured if that was my experience, maybe that was the same for others like me here in Newark,” Bautista said.
That’s when Bautista decided to enroll in a dual MD/MPH degree program between Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and the School of Public Health. He took to it like a duck to water, Rutgers administrators said.
During his first year, Bautista founded the NJMS Lifestyle Medicine Interest Group, where he oversaw the implementation of student fitness programs and community lifestyle medicine initiatives. He also became involved in “Code Blue: Redefining the Practice of Medicine,” a documentary film produced by Rutgers undergraduate and medical school alum Saray Stancic.
Now – as a medical resident in internal medicine and pediatrics at Prisma Health/University of South Carolina – Bautista is continuing his march towards his dream of becoming a doctor. When he completes the last of his medical education, Bautista plans to help build a health care system that empowers people to be “stewards of their own health” and make positive changes to their employment, housing, nutrition and education.
He’s gained a growing number of supporters along the way, including the Pat Tillman Foundation, which named him a 2019 “Tillman Scholar” in recognition of his efforts to make a difference in his community.
Bautista said he was honored to receive the scholarship, and gave a tip of the cap to his old alma mater.
“I think it is a testament to the quality of support coupled with the caliber of education that veterans receive here at Rutgers,” Bautista said.
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