Read the full announcement of the 2025 winners.
The Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay Contest asks medical and nursing students to engage in a reflective writing exercise that illustrates an experience where they or a healthcare team member worked to ensure that humanism was at the core of care.
The essay contest is named in memory of Hope Babette Tang, MD, an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and the Pediatric Medical Director of the hospital’s HIV clinic until her death in 1998 at age 36. Dr. Tang’s patients were often facing numerous obstacles on top of their devastating medical challenges, which made healing even more difficult. Her mantra in caring for her patients was “Whatever it takes.” Her approach meant she saw the person in front of her, not just their medical situation. Many of her acts of caring only came to be known after her death. She treated the whole patient, a hallmark of humanistic care.
For the 2025 Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay Contest, medical and nursing students were asked to reflect on the following quote from Dr. Arnold P. Gold, Co-Founder of the Gold Foundation: “Of all the tools in my medical bag, the most important of all is not in the bag itself – it’s my ears, to listen to the patient.”
2025 Medical Student Winners
First Place | “The Severance of a Thread”
Nezienwa Ezenwa
University of Texas Medical Branch John Sealy School of Medicine
Second Place | “No Estás Sola”
Maria Jose Gomez
Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine
Third Place | “Between Silence and Speech: The Power of Listening in Psychiatric Care”
Ziad Saade
Harvard Medical School