Marcus Whitlow

Marcus Whitlow was valedictorian of his graduating class at Jeremiah Burke High School in the Dorchester section of Boston. He got offers of full scholarships from four colleges and chose Northeastern University.

But three-quarters of the way through Whitlow’s first year, he had to leave because his grandfather became ill and could no longer work.

His grandparents had adopted Whitlow and his two older sisters after their mother had lost custody due to a mental illness. Whitlow’s grandmother had died six years earlier, and many of his aunts, uncles and cousins, as well as one of his sisters, had died from complications of MELAS syndrome, a genetic disorder. Other relatives were disabled by the syndrome and unable to help. 

Whitlow, who is healthy, had been taking care of family members since childhood. He couldn’t let his grandfather down.

“I was always just ‘the doctor’ in the family, the one who noticed if somebody had a symptom,” he says.

For a decade, Whitlow worked multiple jobs simultaneously, primarily in retail management, while caring for his grandfather and taking classes at Quincy College. His grandfather died in 2019, the same year in which Whitlow graduated with an associate degree in behavioral sciences and got engaged to his longtime boyfriend.

Whitlow decided to transfer to UMass Lowell because the Zuckerberg College of Health Sciences offers such a wide range of programs, and because he had good friends and colleagues who had attended.

I’d heard really great things,” he says, “and I knew if they picked UMass Lowell, then it had something special.”

Whitlow started out majoring in applied biomedical sciences, thinking he’d like to work behind the scenes on medical testing and diagnostics. His classmates and professors quickly persuaded him that his outgoing personality was better suited to a people-facing role.

He switched to the health sciences concentration within public health, with the goal of completing the prerequisites for a physician assistant program. He continued working full time, first at Lowell Community Health Center as a health navigator and educator and then for Community Teamwork as the overnight counselor at a family shelter. Meanwhile, his other sister died, and he adopted her son.

Then, “Chemistry happened,” Whitlow says.

He struggled to keep up in Physiological Chemistry and eventually dropped the class, which is one of the prerequisites to be a physician assistant and a requirement in the health sciences concentration.

“It completely destroyed my whole confidence in anything I could ever do,” he says.

But Whitlow’s professors wouldn’t let him give up on his dream of becoming a physician assistant. They advised him to switch to the community health and health promotion concentration and keep going.

“I’ve gotten a lot of support here. All of my professors have reached out to me at some point or offered opportunities to me,” he says. “My professors see something in me that I still don’t see in myself, and they’re telling me to take advantage of it.”

In 2023, his Research Methods teacher, Public Health Asst. Prof. Cassandra Hua, nominated him to go to the American Public Health Association’s national conference in Atlanta. One of the speakers talked about the need for more Black leaders in the field.

“That was an eye-opener,” says Whitlow, who is Black.

That callout made him realize that his whole life, growing up surrounded by economically disadvantaged people in Dorchester and witnessing their struggles to access consistent, high-quality medical care, led up to his decision to pursue public health and advocate for others.

In 2024, he was awarded a paid grant-writing internship with Lowell House, which offers addiction treatment and education as well as outreach to unhoused people with substance use disorders. It focused his interest on the need for support services geared toward LGBTQ youth and the overlapping issues of substance use, homelessness, and sexual and domestic violence.

“I feel like my leadership is needed in the city of Lowell, and I didn’t feel that way before,” he says.

As for chemistry? He’ll tackle that again in the university’s new Post-Baccalaureate Pre-Physician Assistant Certificate Program. He says he’s already completed many of the requirements.

“I’m very motivated … because I’m raising a son (his nephew),” he says. “Everything I’m doing now is for him and his future.”