S2/E11: Conversation with Dr. Osasumwen Asemota on Race, Cultural Identity and Navigating the Field of Medicine as a Student and as a Practitioner

Dr. Osasu Asemota grew up in Jamaica, Queens, a native New Yorker. She attended the accelerated 7-year Sophie Davis MD program at City College of New York in Harlem and completed medical school at Northeast Ohio Medical University. She then completed her residency training in Ob/GYN at Nassau University Medical Center in Long Island. She is presently practicing as an OBGNY at The Woman’s Health Pavilion. Dr. Asemota provides services for underserved communities in the borough she was raised. According to a recent survey, only 5% of physicians in America are black, and approximately 2% are African American. Many of the studies have indicated that African American female physicians experience microaggressions in their practices, from their contemporaries and patients challenging their professional achievements and undermining their expertise in the field of medicine. As many women of color said in a recent New York Times article titled For Doctors of color, Microaggressions Are Too Familiar, “These experiences damaged their sense of confidence and sometimes hampered teamwork, they said, creating tensions that cost precious time during emergency procedures”. To advocate for yourself is to risk the possibility of being labeled as an angry black woman. I wanted to know Dr. Asemota’s experience and how she has been able to navigate this challenging career as a practitioner and in medical school. Before we further her conversation about other topics, Dr. Asemota provided detailed information about the accelerated 7-year Sophie Davis MD program at City College of New York, which is now called CUNY School of Medicine. She offered a brief history of the program and the targeted community they are recruiting into medicine. As she indicated, the school enlist students from a diverse background who comes from the historically underserved community into BS/MD program. The information she provided could benefit those aspiring high school students who would like to study medicine and become a physician or a physician assistant. As we dived into the conversation, Dr. Asemota and I talked about her childhood experience and growing up in an Africa immigrant home. We talked about balancing between the two heritages, Africa and America, as well as black identity. We talked about the lack of conversation on black experience within African immigrant homes. Part of our discussion also focuses on navigating through academic life and social life in college, medical school and how her cultural upbringing benefits or hinders her from fitting into the dominant culture in the spaces she finds herself. Dr. Asemota talked about her medical program as a support system during the time she was in medical school and how she was able to tap back into the family and community support. As our conversation continues, we discussed three major areas of specialty acceptable by Nigerian and many other African immigrants’ parents- Doctors, Lawyers, and engineers-should parents choose what their children study in college. Dr. Asemota promotes that parents should advise their children to explore different professions until they find the path of career choice. She gave an example of her cousin Izzy Odigie who graduated college and is a successful Nigerian Afrobeats choreographer. Dr. Asemota emphasized the importance of family and community support for the children's career choices within our community. In closing, Dr. Asemota gave excellent advice to aspiring students interested in medicine and parents of our community who may have aspiring students who may want to study medicine. Dr. Asemota shared her experience as a black woman in medicine. We talked about how she has been able to balance her profession with mental warfare in a system of implicit biases and racism. You can follow Dr. Asemota on instagram, @ sasu_lens_md