August 25, 2025 | Originally published on The Progressive Magazine
By: Audrey L. Tanksley
When Hurricane Katrina touched down near New Orleans twenty years ago on August 29, 2005, I was just beginning my journey as a first-year medical student. I remember watching the footage of families stranded on rooftops, hospitals submerged, and the bodies of people and pets floating in the floodwaters.
I had not yet developed the language of public health or trauma-informed care, but I felt that something bigger than a hurricane had happened. I didn’t know then that my future patients—many of them plagued by poverty, violence, and environmental injustice—would share similar pathology to the survivors.
Audrey Tanksley is a double board-certified physician in internal medicine and addiction medicine and co-founder of Onyx Medical Wellness, which offers a patient-centered approach to address chronic disease, mental health, and addiction.