Mill Etienne, MD, MPH, FAAN, FAES
New York Medical College
In a 2023 video from New York Medical College (NYMC), Mill Etienne, MD, MPH, vice chancellor, associate dean for student affairs, and associate professor of neurology and medicine, reflected on how growing up in the impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, shaped his clinical and pedagogical approach. Dr. Etienne says, “I do remember what it’s like to have less access and to not see physicians on a regular basis. I remember all those elements of my childhood and what I find most fulfilling about my career is the fact that I'm able to take care of patients, give them high-quality care regardless of their ability to pay, and at the same time be able to teach students how to give that high-level care.”
Dr. Etienne knows that seeing the humanity of each patient is key to providing good care, but he also understands that making system-wide changes can have an enormous impact. Dr. Etienne is a founding faculty member of the Transformative Education Leadership Program (TELP), which was designed to combat racism and unconscious bias in the health care field through medical education, and has spearheaded the NYMC involvement with the national organization, Black Men in White Coats. In 2022, he started the Medical Education Lab at NYMC, which has made research opportunities more accessible to all students on campus.
As director of the electives, Multiculturalism in Medicine, Impact of War on Medicine, and Health and Justice, for fourth-year medical students, Dr. Etienne has broadened perspectives on how to treat patients from a wide range of backgrounds. Through the Health and Justice elective, students meet in a classroom with people who are incarcerated so they can exchange ideas, complete projects together, and learn from each other. The students gain a more in-depth understanding of patients’ challenges from hearing and seeing these challenges firsthand.
Shortly after 9/11, Dr. Etienne joined the Navy and was commissioned while still a resident at Columbia University. He served as the founding director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, now the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Because of his ties to Haiti, Dr. Etienne served as one of the physicians and chief of the ethics committee on board the U.S. Naval Ship Comfort during Operation Unified Response, the U.S. military response to Haiti’s devastating earthquake in January 2010. And during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Etienne was again called up to serve as the chair of the Health Equity Task Force for vaccine distribution in the Hudson Valley.
In addition to his naval service and work at NYMC, Dr. Etienne is a visiting scholar at the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care at Tuskegee University and director of medicine and neurology at WMCHealth’s Good Samaritan Hospital, the same hospital where he himself had limited access to care in his youth. He is a past president of the New York State Neurological Society and the Harlem and Yale University chapters of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
Dr. Etienne has received numerous accolades for his work, including the Crain’s New York Champion of Change award; the American Academy of Neurology Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Changemaker Award; and the American Medical Association Dedication to the Profession Award. In 2021, he received the NYMC Gold Humanism Honor Society Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award. He’s received the NYMC Award for Excellence in Teaching and Mentorship ten times.
Dr. Etienne earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and an MD from NYMC. He earned an MPH from Columbia University, where he also completed residency and fellowship training in neurology with subspecialty training in epilepsy and clinical neurophysiology. Dr. Etienne is board-certified in neurology, epilepsy, clinical neurophysiology, and brain injury medicine.