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Temple St. Luke’s students Mia Hess from Tamaqua and John Sankari from Northampton don their white coats prior to the start of the White Coat Ceremony.

The Temple/St. Luke's School of Medicine Class of 2028 students were honored Friday, August 9, in the 2024 White Coat Ceremony at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, Philadelphia.

Forty-two first-year medical students, who will train for all four years at Bethlehem-based Temple/St. Luke’s, donned their “doctor” coats for the first time. This rite-of-passage for all medical students signifies their transition from the study of preclinical to clinical health sciences.

Northampton resident John Sankari is inspired to become a doctor so he can help “bridge the gap between language and medicine” as he improves access to medical care for the Arabic-speaking community in the Lehigh Valley. Born in Syria, the Muhlenberg College graduate, who majored in neurosciences and worked in a lab focused on preventing the formation of traumatic memories, says “taking care of my community will be an honor of the highest magnitude.”

Shaden Eldakar-Hein, MD, MS, FACP, Senior Associate Dean of the medical school, said, “On behalf of the entire Temple/St. Luke’s School of Medicine faculty and administration at St. Luke’s, I am honored to congratulate our medical students for achieving this major milestone on their journeys to becoming doctors.

“Over the next four years, we look forward to teaching and nurturing them as they become compassionate healers in our community.”
Sankari’s classmate at Temple/St. Luke’s, 24-year-old Mia Hess, just moved back to the Valley from Boulder, Colorado to attend Temple/St. Luke’s School of Medicine. For two years after graduating from Villanova University with a degree in chemistry, she conducted clinical research at the Integrative Physiology of Aging Laboratory at the University of Colorado at Boulder, which has informed her career goals.

As a physician, Hess hopes to eventually specialize in cardiology and dreams of joining St. Luke’s nationally lauded Heart and Vascular Center, named one of the nation’s Top 50 providers of heart care.

“Medicine has always been the only thing I could see myself doing,” said Sankari, who is 21 years old and fluent in Arabic. He’s his family’s first doctor-to-be and the first to graduate college, which he did in only three years. Between college and medical school, Sankari worked for a year as a landscaper and waiter in a local diner to earn tuition funds and enrich his perspective on the value of serving the community.

Born and raised in Tamaqua, Hess said she wants to return there when she’s a physician.

“I want to be part of this Network that provides top-quality care to its community, with a focus on helping to increase longevity through lifestyle changes that improve heart health.”

The Temple/St. Luke’s School of Medicine at St. Luke’s University Hospital in Fountain Hill is the Lehigh Valley’s first and only four-year medical school, where the region’s brightest young minds go to become doctors. By cultivating home-grown medical talent, such as Hess and Sankari, who have deep roots in the Greater Lehigh Valley, St. Luke’s is helping the region to secure its health and well-being amid a worsening doctor shortage nationally.

Thanks to generous donors who support endowed scholarships, all School of Medicine students receive scholarship funding for each of their four years. Hess says these scholarships will be “super-helpful in making it possible to attend Temple/St. Luke’s.”

She says she chose Temple/St. Luke’s after experiencing its culture of educational rigor and innovation while she was able to shadow a few of its physicians after college. As a college student, she joined a group of Villanova classmates who visited Panama to study and aid in building sustainable health systems for the rural residents.

The much-anticipated white coat ceremony was profound and memorable for each medical student and their family members.

For Hess, receiving her white coat was the continuation of a dreamed-about journey that she has nurtured for as long as she can recall.

“It was a surreal feeling, something I’ve worked so hard for that affirms that I can do this!” she said.

Sankari said the ceremony, for him, was “very emotional, even unreal,” as he sets out to become the first doctor in his family and one of the few dedicated to treating the sometimes-underserved, close-knit community that he knows and loves.