“I found my inspiration within my family. I wanted to be like my mom,” who was a nurse and immigrant from Haiti. “Mom had a heart for service, and modeled servant-leadership for me at a very young age.”

Dr. Remy Gomes received her bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Binghamton University and went to medical school at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School before doing her residency at Schneider Children’s Hospital in New York (now known as the Cohen Children’s Medical Center) and her neonatology fellowship at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Prior to medical school, she worked for a time in health care administration and as a research assistant at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and considered going into oncology and later obstetrics, but soon realized that her true calling was to work with children — especially the youngest.

She began her tenure at Boston Children’s Hospital while earning a master’s degree in public health from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She also worked internationally for six months earlier in her career through the Human Resources for Health Program focusing on training medical professionals in neonatology and working with children and families in Rwanda.

“I took every baby home with me, in some respects,” she says. “When you leave, you have to trust that [Rwanda’s medical providers] will be able to sustain some of the treatments and practices they learned.”

Dr. Remy Gomes joined Southcoast Health in 2016 when we expanded our affiliation with Boston Children’s Hospital, and today she works as Southcoast Health’s Director of Neonatology. She, her husband, and their 13-year-old daughter live in Middleborough.

“I fall in love with a baby the first time they open their eyes,” she says. “It’s their innocence and vulnerability. There is a “spirit of hope” working with even the sickest newborns.

Black History Month, celebrated each February, is important to Dr. Remy Gomes as a Black professional.

“Black History Month is every month for me,” she says. “A month is simply not enough” to pay homage to “the legacy of all the hard work of those who came before me.”

Today, she said, it is essential “to embrace the tenets, resilience, and the fight” for access to adequate health care for everyone.

“People have been significantly disadvantaged by [the effects of] COVID-19 based on zip code or skin color,” she says. “If health is a human right, then health equity is a social justice issue.”

To learn more about how Southcoast Health honors Black History Month and to meet more members of our team, visit www.southcoast.org/diversity-and-inclusion-at-southcoast-health/.