Board Certified in Family Medicine
By the American Board of Family Medicine
Postgraduate Medical Training
University of Minnesota St. John’s Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program
St. Paul/Minneapolis, MN, USA
06/18/2018 – 06/30/2021
Masters of Public Health (MPH) in Global Health/Complex Humanitarian Emergencies Fellow
Rollins School of Public Health
Emory University/
Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Atlanta, GA, USA
08/2014 – 08/2015
Graduate Certificate, Complex Humanitarian Emergencies
Rollins School of Public Health
Emory University
Atlanta, GA, USA
08/2014 – 08/2015
Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (M.B.Ch.B; Equivalent to M.D)
Makerere University
Kampala, Uganda
09/2003 – 06/2008
Honors Bachelor of Science (H.B.Sc.)
University of Guelph
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
09/1998 – 08/2002
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Walk us through your story, Dr. Ramla Kasozi, MD, MPH.
My interaction with education and medicine has been a love-hate kind of relationship.
Having lived in three different parts of the world (Canada, Uganda, and the USA) and worked in the health sector in two different countries (Uganda and USA), I’ve had the privilege of seeing healthcare in different settings.
As a former refugee child, I recall the many frustrations and disappointments my parents had experienced while navigating the healthcare system. My keen interest in refugee health has been lifelong with a particular interest in tackling health disparities through health equity initiatives. Working as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Global Complex Humanitarian Emergencies (CHE) Fellow at Emory University’s Center for Humanitarian Emergencies, I conducted research with the Emergency Response and Recovery Branch (ERRB) on refugee health and participated in projects to offer primary healthcare to the uninsured, refugee population in Atlanta. As a former refugee, it was such an honor for me to give back and help the migrant refugee population in the community. Consequently, my experience at Emory has given her working knowledge of quantitative and qualitative research.
In addition, I have worked directly with cancer patients on various clinical trials as a Clinical Research Scholar at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. She has appreciated the importance of the multidisciplinary approach towards patient care due to her work-based interactions with various health care providers.
Witnessing the impact of racial bias and the various microaggressions my parents experienced as Ugandan refugees, really sparked my interest in becoming a doctor. In June 2021, I completed my Family Medicine Residency at the University of Minnesota’s St. John’s Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program. During my residency training, I was heavily involved in scholarly and community work addressing health equity and race-based medicine.
As a Board-Certified Family Medicine Physician, I plan on continuing my scholarly work in improving medical education to be more relevant to communities. I will be practicing full-scope Family Medicine while also working in academic medicine. I plan on bridging comprehensive clinical care with community public health in an effort to reduce health disparities by creating community-oriented primary health care initiatives. In the long term, I hope to pursue translational research and establish domestic and global health collaborations dealing with refugee health.
What challenges do you face in your everyday work?
As a Black Muslim female family medicine physician in the U.S.A., I know that medicine historically racialized Black and Brown bodies, and to some degree, it continues to do so. I’ve had many moments of “double consciousness” that W. E. B. Du Bois described very eloquently in his book, The Souls of Black Folk, where I’m conflicted with the double consciousness of being a physician and a Black woman: the physician who wants to offer care to her patients but, at the same time, trying to reconcile with the dark history of medicine in the U.S.A. that experimented on Black female bodies. I mention this in the article I wrote in August 2020 called “Reimagining Graduate Medical Education” These challenges continue on a daily basis but fortunately I have surrounded myself with a village of Black Physicians (The Black Healers Network) that has been instrumental in offering guidance on navigating medical education as a Black Women.
What disparities in the healthcare system impact your work?
With the current global and domestic realization of the dual pandemic of systemic racism and COVID-19, there has finally been some engagement from academic institutions to reflect on their role in causing health disparities among minorities. Currently, I feel that graduate medical education training fails to acknowledge the white supremacist foundation of medicine through all of its teaching methods, including but not limited to didactics and clinical encounters with patients. I believe this is because the dominant white culture has not been willing to engage in relevant discussions about systematic racism and white supremacy. I love the field of family medicine—so much so that my criticisms of the field are meant to stimulate radical change in training. Thus, I plan on continuing my scholarly work in race-based medicine and health equity with the aim of improving medical education to be more relevant to our communities.
What direction would you like to see the healthcare industry move towards in the coming years?
Graduate medical education needs to acknowledge the dark history of medicine in our curricula, as a first step, and how systemic racism is the most important social determinant of the health of BIPOC. Robust anti-racism curriculums are needed to achieve this reality and I plan on being at the forefront of this reality.