In Cha Kim and Atul Dhablania endow a program allowing ophthalmology residents to gain invaluable surgical experience at an eye hospital in India.
In Cha Kim and Atul Dhablania were already strong supporters of the Keck School of Medicine of USC, having endowed the Dhablania and Kim Family Global Medicine Fellowship Fund in 2014, when they became involved with the USC Roski Eye Institute.
Atul’s brother-in-law was dealing with diabetes, a condition that had progressed to diabetic retinopathy, a common eye disease among South Asians that can cause vision loss and blindness. To help his brother-in-law, Atul and In Cha met with physicians at Roski to learn how they could be of help.
They soon learned of Roski’s Srikiran Institute Initiative, a new exchange program that could give USC ophthalmology residents the chance to do a clinical rotation at the Srikiran Institute of Ophthalmology in Kakinada, India.
“The opportunity connected the dots between our desire to support global medicine and what Roski wanted to do,” they said.
The day Kim and Dhablania heard of the initiative, they agreed to fund it. They pledged $50,000 for multiple years of support.
Beyond the initiative’s ties to the South Asian community, Kim and Dhablania had personal beliefs about why they thought the program would be effective.