{"id":3000,"date":"2026-05-11T15:42:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T15:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/11\/in-the-tiny-vulnerable-patients-she-saw-herself\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T15:42:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T15:42:10","slug":"in-the-tiny-vulnerable-patients-she-saw-herself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/11\/in-the-tiny-vulnerable-patients-she-saw-herself\/","title":{"rendered":"In the tiny, vulnerable patients, she saw herself"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Alison Farrar.<\/p>\n

Niles Singer\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tHealth\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\tIn the tiny, vulnerable patients, she saw herself\t<\/h1>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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\n\t\tAlvin Powell\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/address>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\t\t

\t\t
\n\t\t\t6 min read\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n

\n\t\t\tCaring for premature babies sparked Alison Farrar\u2019s passion for psychiatry. Manning a crisis hotline during COVID sealed it.\t\t<\/h2>\n<\/header>\n
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\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\tPart of the<\/span>
\n\t\t\tCommencement 2026<\/span>
\n\t\t\t series<\/span>
\n\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

\n\t\t\t\tA collection of features and graduate profiles covering Harvard\u2019s 375th Commencement.\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

When Alison Farrar was in high school in southern California, she volunteered at a local hospital\u2019s neonatal intensive care unit. In the tiny babies, she saw reflections of herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had been born very prematurely so I had this connection with the patients that we were serving,\u201d said Farrar, who was born two months early after her mother developed sepsis. \u201cI always heard stories growing up about being born so small. When I was born, I was really sick, my mom was really sick.\u201d<\/p>\n

The East Los Angeles hospital took care of many disadvantaged families. And as Farrar held the babies and talked with the parents, she saw how some families were struggling to make ends meet, and some babies\u2019 difficulties didn\u2019t end with being premature.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe took care of a lot of babies waiting to go into the foster care system,\u201d Farrar said. \u201cA lot of it was holding the babies and talking with the families. I got to practice my Spanish and support people going through that emotionally difficult time. I felt that was special work.\u201d<\/p>\n

That special work launched Farrar onto a path that led to Alabama, Boston and Harvard Medical School<\/a>, Oxford, and back. Along the way, she hasn\u2019t wavered in her vision of using medicine to help others, but has taken a broad view, one that embraces physics and math and saw her contributing to research into drug resistance while manning an overnight crisis hotline \u2014 and one that will have her marking her HMS graduation this spring with classmates as she anticipates a career in psychiatry.<\/p>\n

That early hospital experience also helped Farrar see the importance of technology. She had heard how risky her own entry into the world was, and how decades earlier it would have been unlikely that she survived.<\/p>\n

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“I saw how technology had the ability to make a difference. Babies who wouldn\u2019t have survived 20 years ago, we were sending home. I realized this was something I really wanted to contribute to.”<\/p>\n

Alison Farrar<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI saw how technology had the ability to make a difference. Babies who wouldn\u2019t have survived 20 years ago, we were sending home,\u201d Farrar said. \u201cI realized this was something I really wanted to contribute to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farrar attended the University of Alabama to study physics and mathematics, hoping to apply those skills in medical research. She volunteered at a free clinic, running the diagnostic lab there, where she tested blood and urine samples and even drew blood herself, perfecting the art of relaxing people while standing with a needle in her hand. As with the urban poor she had seen in East LA, most of the Alabama patients were underinsured, and Farrar could see the struggles common between the two populations, even though their daily circumstances were at times starkly different.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne patient was late for his appointment because his horse was sick. He\u2019d been planning to ride his horse and had trouble getting another ride,\u201d Farrar said. \u201cThings were very different, but it still reinforced the same passion about how to use technology to improve care for people who are underserved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farrar was accepted into Harvard Medical School\u2019s M.D.\/Ph.D. program, and in 2018 arrived on campus for her first two years of study. She left HMS from 2020 to 2024 for Oxford University, where she earned a D.Phil. in interdisciplinary bioscience. At Oxford, she worked in the lab of biophysicist Achilles Kapanidis<\/a>. Among other projects, Farrar worked to develop a rapid test for antibiotic resistance that used the altered distribution of cellular ribosomes, tiny protein factories inside the cell.<\/p>\n

Earlier work showed that ribosomes shift within the cell after exposure to antibiotics. Farrar and colleagues first made the ribosomes fluorescent, then exposed the cells to antibiotics, which shifted the ribosomes in a predictable way. The patterns were evaluated using an AI deep learning algorithm.<\/p>\n

Published in the journal Communications Biology in 2025, the study<\/a>, with Farrar as first author, showed that the process was highly sensitive: 99 percent effective at detecting drug resistance after examining just two cells. That finding, researchers wrote, had the potential to dramatically decrease processing time \u2014 from days to as little as 30 minutes \u2014 by eliminating the need to culture cells in order to have enough for analysis.<\/p>\n

Farrar\u2019s varied academic background \u2014 blending math, physics, and her medical training at HMS \u2014 gave her a unique, multidisciplinary perspective among the team, Kapanidis said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s versatile, fearless, and very, very motivated,\u201d Kapanidis said, adding that much of the work was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, which added its own challenges and complexities. \u201cShe has this spirit of looking forward, being very positive not only as a scientist but as a person, a lab citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the lab work, Farrar didn\u2019t forget about the people experiencing challenges in their lives. She coordinated the Oxford Nightline, an overnight hotline staffed seven days a week for people in crisis. And there were plenty, she said, with the pandemic taking its toll on mental health, on campus and beyond.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a really meaningful part of my time at Oxford, and I think led me to psychiatry,\u201d Farrar said. \u201cThe seeds were sown when I was working in the NICU, but working with Nightline, people were calling in situations of mental health crisis and we were helping them through those moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

After earning her D.Phil. in 2024, Farrar returned to HMS for her last two years of medical school, time dominated by the clinical rotations that expose students to different medical specialties. Key clerkships for Farrar were at McLean Hospital<\/a>\u2019s psychosis unit, on Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center<\/a>\u2019s consult psychiatry team, and, in the months leading up to Commencement, in Massachusetts General Hospital<\/a>\u2019s emergency psychiatry unit.<\/p>\n

With both an M.D. and a D.Phil. under her belt, Farrar, who is entering the psychiatry residency research track at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, is looking forward to beginning her career as a doctor and continuing her training, which combines clinical training and research.<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely want to continue doing a mix of research and treating patients,\u201d Farrar said. \u201cI\u2019m really interested in digital mental health, wearable devices, and how those can be used in psychiatry research. I\u2019m really looking forward to the next chapter and seeing where my clinical experiences and interests lead me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alison Farrar. Niles Singer\/Harvard Staff Photographer Health In the tiny, vulnerable patients, she saw herself Alvin Powell Harvard Staff Writer May 11, 2026 6 min read Caring for premature babies sparked Alison Farrar\u2019s passion for psychiatry. Manning a crisis hotline during COVID sealed it. Part of the Commencement 2026 series A collection of features and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3001,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":56,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-staying-healthy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}