{"id":611870,"date":"2023-02-25T14:56:14","date_gmt":"2023-02-25T20:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/25\/a-young-neurologist-mentors-black-women-fights-disparities\/"},"modified":"2023-02-25T14:56:14","modified_gmt":"2023-02-25T20:56:14","slug":"a-young-neurologist-mentors-black-women-fights-disparities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/25\/a-young-neurologist-mentors-black-women-fights-disparities\/","title":{"rendered":"A Young Neurologist Mentors Black Women, Fights Disparities"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Eseosa Ighodaro, MD, PhD, is a neurologist busy tackling health disparities now. But she kept her first experiments on ice at home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to hide experiments in the freezer so my mom couldn\u2019t see them,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d mix orange juice, pepper, and salt to see if I could create a chemical reaction. Afterwards, my mom would go into the kitchen and say, \u2018Where are my ingredients?\u2019 She was calling me \u2018Doctor\u2019 even before I knew I wanted to be a physician-scientist.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the family dining room, Ighodaro\u2019s father set up a whiteboard with erasers and markers to teach his daughters math and science. He\u2019d come to the U.S. from Nigeria in his 20s with $20 in his pocket. Having worked part-time jobs while getting his computer science degree, he had no patience for excuses.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the weekend, when other kids were playing outside, he\u2019d say, \u2018Where\u2019s your science book? Where\u2019s your math book?\u2019\u201d Ighodaro says. \u201cI went to college thinking I could take over the world!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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The achievements kept coming. Ighodaro became the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Kentucky College of Medicine with a combined MD\/PhD degree in 2019. A medical school neuroscience class made her fall in love with the brain. So after graduating, she headed to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for her residency in neurology and neuroscience research. Next comes a fellowship in vascular neurology at Emory University, where she plans to become a stroke specialist.<\/p>\n

But her goals go way beyond her degrees.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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Combating Health Disparities in Neurology<\/h2>\n

Ighodaro plans to take on the health disparities around stroke in the Black community. That includes studying how chronic racism may raise stroke risk \u2013 and helping to prevent Black people who\u2019ve already had one stroke to not have another.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s already gained national prominence as an advocate and teacher. The COVID-19 death of another doctor \u2013\u00a0<\/span>Susan Moore, MD, an internal medicine doctor in Indiana \u2013 was a turning point.<\/p>\n

Ighodaro had seen Moore\u2019s videos posted on Facebook while hospitalized and severely ill. Moore described how she had begged for a CT scan and to get the antiviral drug remdesivir, and how she was refused pain medication. \u201cIf I was white, I wouldn\u2019t have to go through that,\u201d Moore said in one video. \u201cThis is how Black people get killed, when you send them home, and they don\u2019t know how to fight for themselves.\u201d Moore was discharged from one hospital on Dec. 7, 2020, and was readmitted to another hospital just 12 hours later. She died on Dec. 20, 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWatching this video, I was irate,\u201d Ighodaro says. \u201cIt was unacceptable! A Black female physician begging to be seen, to be treated as human, only to be dismissed. She died of COVID-19 complications because a system in which she worked to take care of patients treated her like a drug-seeker.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ighodaro put together a panel of eight Black women doctors and medical students. They released a video, \u201cTragedy: The Story of Dr. Susan Moore and Black Medical Disparities,\u201d about what Moore\u2019s death meant to them. Its success inspired Ighodaro to produce two more panel discussion videos: one on racial health disparities in fertility, labor, and delivery and another on racism in medical publishing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The response to her videos prompted Ighodaro to create\u00a0 <\/span>Ziengbe<\/span><\/a> (\u201czee-en-bay\u201d), a nonprofit health advocacy organization. The word means \u201cperseverance\u201d in the Edo language of Nigeria, her father\u2019s people. Ziengbe\u2019s mission is to eliminate neurological and other health disparities facing the Black community through advocacy, education, and empowerment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI want us to treat this issue like a medical emergency,\u201d like how a stroke is treated, Ighodaro says. \u201cIf we don\u2019t, Black people will continue to die.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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Nurturing the Next Generation<\/h2>\n

Ighodaro also has her eye on the doctors and scientists who\u2019re coming after her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One of her first projects with Ziengbe was to harness social media to support, educate, and mentor young people from communities of color and other underrepresented groups who are interested in pursuing neurology careers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI had such wonderful mentors who played a major role in my becoming a neurologist,\u201d she says. But she sees \u201cso many students\u201d who don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Ighodaro has virtual neurology study groups. She uses email, WhatsApp, and social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook and has grown it into a community of nearly 500 students and mentors. In more than a dozen online study sessions over the past year, she\u2019s hosted sessions on topics including stroke management, seizures, and traumatic brain injury as well as preparing first-year interns for their first time practicing medicine on a hospital ward. The videos are archived online via the Ziengbe website.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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She\u2019s helped students publish their work, strengthening them as neurology residency candidates. \u201cSome of them have never written a paper like this for a medical journal before,\u201d Ighodaro says. She also speaks to medical professional societies, such as the American Academy of Neurology, about using social media to recruit the next generation of doctors, empower underserved populations, and combat racial disparities in health and health care.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my primary goals is to recruit more people of color to the field of neurology and neuroscience, especially Black women,\u201d Ighodaro says. \u201cI\u2019m trying to be the mentor that I wanted when I was younger. During my education, it was rare for me to be taught by a Black female neurologist or neuroscientist, or even come across one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those too young to know their possibilities are some of her favorites.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to show little Black girls that we are here,\u201d Ighodaro says. \u201cThe road is difficult and can be lonely at times, but we can do it. We just have to dream big.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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Read More<\/a>
\n Johnathon Block<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eseosa Ighodaro, MD, PhD, is a neurologist busy tackling health disparities now. But she kept her first experiments on ice at home.\u201cI used to hide experiments in the freezer so my mom couldn\u2019t see them,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d mix orange juice, pepper, and salt to see if I could create a chemical reaction. Afterwards, my<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":611871,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43462,1649],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-611870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-neurologist","category-young"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}