Sylvia Owusu-Ansah '00 shapes medical storytelling on HBO Max's The Pitt.
In 1967, 25 Black men from Pittsburgh's impoverished Hill District were trained as the country's first paramedics-not by a university hospital or a government agency, but through a community initiative called Freedom House Ambulance Service. They revolutionized emergency medicine. Then history mostly forgot them. University of Rochester alumna Sylvia Owusu-Ansah '00 made sure HBO Max didn't.
Owusu-Ansah-medical director of prehospital and emergency medical services at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh-joined The Pitt as a medical advisor through Hollywood, Health & Society, a University of Southern California program that helps the entertainment industry tell accurate health stories. The show, which follows a single shift at a fictional Pittsburgh emergency department, swept the television drama category at the Emmy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and Critics Choice Awards. Season 2 is currently streaming.
"If you're going to talk about healthcare in Pittsburgh," Owusu-Ansah told the writers, "you have to talk about Freedom House Ambulance." The story found its way into the show through Willie, an 81-year-old patient revealed to be a former medic in the program. Within weeks of the episode's release, social media lit up with people discovering this history for the first time-fueling bipartisan support for a bill to award Freedom House the Congressional Gold Medal, a cause Owusu-Ansah has long championed.
Freedom House was one of many ideas she brought to The Pitt. When the producers asked what storylines had been missing from medical dramas, she raised the underrepresentation of Black physicians-only 5 percent of active physicians identify as Black, and just 2.3 percent are Black women-and the growing number of children ingesting THC. She also shared insights into the demographics of Pittsburgh and how healthcare workers observe a moment of silence after a patient dies.
"If you're going to talk about healthcare in Pittsburgh, you have to talk about Freedom House Ambulance."
One storyline drew directly from her own life. A 17-year-old Black girl arrived at Owusu-Ansah's emergency department spitting, biting, and complaining of pain. "I heard a lot of screaming," she recalls. "She was in four-point restraints. The security guard even had his hand around her neck."
Owusu-Ansah-the only other Black person there-immediately recognized the patient was not an addict but in the throes of a sickle cell pain crisis. "I yelled and screamed, told them to get off her, and kneeled down next to her, whispered in her ear, 'Just try to relax. I'm here for you. I'm your advocate.'" That patient became Joyce St. Clair on The Pitt, with third-year resident Samira Mohan taking on the role of Owusu-Ansah.
For season 2, she helped build the story of one-month-old "Baby Jane Doe," abandoned in the hospital bathroom. She shared information on Pennsylvania's Safe Haven law and the threshold-older than 28 days-at which leaving an infant at a hospital becomes a crime.
Originally from Boston, Owusu-Ansah majored in biochemistry at URochester before earning an MD from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and a master of public health from Johns Hopkins University. Long before The Pitt, she was channeling her own experiences into educating and standing up for others.
While at URochester, she founded Kids for College, a mentorship program that brought students from underserved Rochester communities to campus for STEM and liberal arts enrichment. She later spent more than a decade on Capitol Hill advocating for pediatric healthcare legislation.
Since October, Owusu-Ansah has stepped back from the emergency department: She is a cancer survivor who completed her final chemotherapy treatment on February 10. She has also stepped behind the camera. In Good Hands, a finalist for an HBO Short Film Award, draws on her experience as a Black physician in academia. Featured at last year's American Black Film Festival, it is currently screening on American Airlines.
For Owusu-Ansah, navigating the television and film industry as a full-time physician provides a newfound sense of balance-and a way to reach people medicine alone cannot. "Over the span of a lifetime of my profession, I may touch hundreds, maybe thousands of lives individually," she says. "But through media, you touch millions of people all at once."
This story is adapted with permission from an original article by Suubah Sayed '27 in the Campus Times, the student newspaper at the University of Rochester.
