As a third-year medical student at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Nikisha Kothari can’t treat patients just yet. But she’s not waiting for her degree to start making an impact on the future of medicine.

With an interest in ophthalmology, Kothari is organizing a 5K race/walk in Hollywood on Sunday, through Hope for Vision, a national non-profit that raises money to fund research for retinal diseases.

“You don’t have to have medical knowledge to make a difference,” she said.

Kothari’s passion for ophthalmology was solidified when she read about, and then met, the Lidsky family. Betti and Carlos Lidsky of Sunny Isles have four children, three of whom have a hereditary degenerative eye disease known as retinitis pigmentosa, or RP. The family’s resolve and optimism inspired Kothari. “One thing led to another and I realized that this is what I want to do with my life,” she said.

Betti and Carlos both carry the recessive gene that caused RP in three of their four children. Isaac Lidsky, 32, the founder of Hope for Vision, was diagnosed with RP when he was 13. Today, the graduate of Harvard Law School is completely blind. The couple’s two other children’s vision is also compromised, but not as severely.

“What touched me the most is that the foundation was started by a family,” said Kothari, 23.

Kothari has taken a particular interest in the retina, the part of the eye that is sensitive to light and relays visual images to the brain. “I think it’s the part of the eye that needs the most exploration, and has a lot of unknowns,” she said.

But research costs money and “the government can’t do it all,” said Dr. Byron Lam, one of Kothari’s mentors and a specialist in RP — among other areas — at the University of Miami’s Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.

Lam and his family will be participating in the event along with Kothari and other students. “We stress the word ‘walk’,” he said.

About a year ago, researchers at the Hussman Institute for Human Genomics at the University of Miami identified the defective gene that caused RP in the Lidsky children. The gene is linked to about 12 to 15 percent of the RP cases among Ashkenazi, or Mediterranean, Jews, said Dr. Margaret Pericak-Vance, director of the institute. And according to Lam, there are more than 50 known genes that cause RP, though identifying the culprit is “just the beginning” of the battle to stanch or cure the disease.

Once the gene has been identified, scientists can begin lab testing to derive a gene therapy that can be injected directly into the eye in an attempt to prevent progression of the disease. Still, Lam said, gene therapy cannot restore a patient’s vision.

Because RP is a hereditary disease, Kothari added, “one of the advantages of gene discovery is the ability to screen newborns,” for the mutated gene, allowing doctors to take precautions sooner rather than later.

And while gene therapy may not supply a cure for Isaac, researchers are exploring other avenues that may be helpful.

“A lot of people don’t realize that curing blindness is feasible within the next five, 10, 15 years,” Kothari said.

Added Lam: “Sometimes it’s because of a lack of resources that you can’t go forward, not because you don’t know what to do.” Hence the motto for Hope for Vision’race: help end blindness by 2020.

Betti Lidsky finds the doctors’ optimism infectious: “I know that [my children] will see again — researchers are on their way to figuring this out. The only thing that has held them back, as in every other area, is money,” she said.