Baylor Alumna Aims to Increase Surgical Access Worldwide  

Rachel Davis, M.D. ’14, Res. ’21., hears the stories all the time as a general surgeon at Ben Taub Hospital, the Baylor-affiliated public hospital operated by Harris Health System. When patients talk about their lives, often a significant surgery comes up as a pivotal event.  

“Being able to come into someone’s life at that point in time is a very special thing,” Dr. Davis, a 2023 Baylor College of Medicine Humanitarian Alumni Award recipient said. 

Dr. Davis’ passion for surgery and patient care guided her through medical school at Baylor College of Medicine as well as early experiences performing surgeries in low-resource settings on “mission-trips.” In these remote locations, she and other surgeons would arrive into communities lacking surgical access and perform surgeries, helping as many people as possible.  

While it was valuable to operate on patients, Dr. Davis realized quickly that she wasn’t actually solving the problem of surgical access. To do this would require infrastructure—such as blood banks and intensive care units—where desperately needed in these locations and would require creating ways to bring in materials and equipment, assisting patients with their post-operative needs and training local healthcare providers to perform these surgeries when she and her colleagues left. And that didn’t even broach whether a patient could afford a surgery or travel to a hospital for care.  

With these experiences in mind, Dr. Davis, as a first-year surgery resident at Baylor at the time, pitched an innovative idea to create a residency track that not only mobilized people who cared about getting quality surgical access to people who didn’t have it, but also making that access more effective. Baylor agreed and worked with Dr. Davis to establish in 2016 what is today the Global Surgery Track.  

“That I was offered that sort of challenge and that buy-in from leadership is just mind-blowing,” Dr. Davis said. 

While most surgical programs train residents to master one type of surgery, the Global Surgery Track at Baylor employs a general surgery approach, training surgeons to know how to perform several surgeries. This allows trainees to be most effective in low-resource settings where they might be the only surgeons for miles. The program is also customizable, allowing residents to define and focus on training local healthcare providers, conducting research or advocacy work, or some combination. As the only global surgery residency program certified by the National Resident Matching Program in the nation, the Track has successfully trained three individuals, including Dr. Davis, with six others currently training.  

Now, as an assistant professor in the Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery, Dr. Davis is also the director of the Center for Global Surgery, which functions as a hub for global surgery education, collaborative partnerships and global health innovation. The Center offers a variety of global surgery training programs on-site and through virtual and remote platforms for practicing physicians, fellows and residents, including the Global Surgery Advocacy and Policy Fellowship, the Essential Surgery Skills Course and the Global Trauma Collaboration. 

“Most of our programs came through local demand, which I am really proud of.” Dr. Davis said. “They are derived from someone saying, ‘Can you help me?’” 

Dr. Davis continues to hear more stories from people who need assistance. They inspire her to keep going, to create innovative solutions and to make sure that the day someone needs surgery, someone is there to help.