Standing in the gap
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The phone call brought Phavon Sage to his knees. Tears fell as he processed what he was hearing — his entire four-year medical degree would be funded by EVMS’ only full-tuition MD scholarship.
It hasn’t been an easy road for Sage. Growing up in Norfolk, his childhood was one of poverty and pain. A congenital bleeding disorder left him feeling frustrated and misunderstood but ultimately cultivated compassion for others and pushed him toward a career in medicine.
“I was able to get a front row seat and a real-time education against prejudice and discrimination,” he says of the struggles he saw around him. “I learned that people are different, and they have different preferences and experiences in life.”
His own experience led him to the Medical and Health Specialties Program at Maury High School, an advanced curriculum that prepares students for careers in health professions. Next he pursued a bachelor’s degree in data analytics and business management from Old Dominion University before moving onto EVMS for a master’s in anatomical sciences and a medical master’s degree.
Becoming financially independent at 18 meant paying for his education entirely on his own. Sage built fences and worked at fast food restaurants until he secured a position as a standardized patient with the Sentara Center for Simulation and Immersive Learning at EVMS.
“Being able to gain such an immersive perspective on empathy and compassion,” he says, “it really helped me and added to my tools, my skill set that I think a physician should have.”
When it came time to fund his medical degree, Sage knew he would need help. That’s when he learned of the Dorothy M. Middleton Memorial Scholarship. The full-tuition scholarship is funded by an endowment from its late namesake, a businesswoman who owned an apartment building near campus and rented discounted rooms to medical students to help offset their tuition.
“She’s a hero,” says Sage, now a member of the MD Class of 2027. “The one thing I would say to Dorothy Middleton is, I hope to be just half the person you were in the time that you were alive. And I hope to even just scratch the surface on the community, compared to the footprints that you left in Hampton Roads.”
He gets emotional when talking about EVMS and the gifts he feels the institution has given him. He even met his wife, Megan (Golliher) Sage (MS ’20), while she was completing a master’s in biomedical sciences research at EVMS. She is now in the biomedical sciences PhD program.
Sage has not yet decided which path of medicine he will take — maybe surgery or primary care — but he knows for sure he wants to work with children.
“Knowing what it’s like to be clinically misunderstood and knowing that there’s a disconnect and a disparity between the pain that you’re experiencing versus how the physician or the healthcare professional interprets that pain — I have been in that gap, and I want to continue to stand in that gap for patients who struggle to communicate.”
Pictured at top: Phavon Sage and his wife Megan Sage outside their alma mater Maury High School.