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Black History Month 2025

Q&A: Dr. Utibe Essien discusses goals of ‘health, equity and justice’ in research

Dr. Utibe Essien is pictured. Essien was chosen as one of 10 Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine by the National Academy of Medicine this past September. (Courtesy of Kaela Speicher)

By Shaun Thomas

Jan. 20, 2025 6:49 p.m.

This post was updated Jan. 20 at 11:35 p.m.

Dr. Utibe Essien, an assistant professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine, sat down with science and health editor Shaun Thomas to discuss his journey into medicine, historical influences on health care and his involvement in leading disparity research.

Essien was named one of 10 Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine by the National Academy of Medicine in September. Essien also spoke about some of his future goals with disparity research and the impact of his award from the NAM.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Daily Bruin: What inspired you to pursue a career in medicine and public health, and how did you decide to focus on health equity?

Utibe Essien: My dad’s a doctor. He’s a primary care doctor in New York, where I grew up. The day I was born, I was born to a mom with preeclampsia, … and I was born via C-section. All of those instances are far more common in Black women compared to other women in the U.S., so my story kind of started in a health disparities framework. I was triggered by my dad’s busy schedule and time away from the family, but I really was inspired working with him one summer in high school and seeing the relationships he built with his patients and the impact he was making in the community – and have been inspired since then, 20-plus years later – to hopefully be able to make a similar impact through my career.

DB: Now that you’re in medicine and public health, what are some of your biggest goals in either of those fields?

UE: I have a huge goal to try and achieve health, equity and justice in medicine. It’s a global goal. My dream is just to continue to collaborate and work with people to try and get us closer to that. I work in the hospital with residents and medical students, teaching them how to become future docs. I don’t think any of us as individuals can do this justice work – we need bigger, broader changes in the social determinants of health and the way we provide care to patients who come to our doors.

DB: How do you envision translating some of that research and that historical perspective into tangible improvements in health equity?

UE: I’m a scientist, a researcher, as well as a doc. So the big way that I do that translation is through my research – writing research articles, disseminating work through podcasts, through social media, through op-eds. Those are really important parts of my work and something I try to continue to mentor and encourage other early career colleagues to do as well. But I think it goes beyond that. It’s actually getting into the communities. … It’s hard work building those relationships with communities, especially in medicine, where you’re often in a lot of different places. I mentioned at the start that I’m showing love to Pittsburgh, which is where I was for the last five years. I’m a New Yorker. I trained in Boston. So I’ve been in all these different communities just through training.

The third way is getting in front of people who can make a big difference and make changes, which is the policymakers. … If it sits in a research article, it’s just not going to make that same impact as someone like yourself actually disseminating it to the broader community in bite-size and accessible ways.

DB: How has being named an emerging leader by the National Academy of Medicine impacted you or your goals?

UE: I’m very grateful for that opportunity. I was someone who can now tell a good story of how I’ve always been supposed to do this work. I saw this happening for me forever, but throughout my early training, I actually was not getting a lot of that positive feedback from my research either. I wasn’t able to find mentorship. I was hitting ideas that didn’t really get funded, … so I really wasn’t sure research was going to be the career for me. But I was fortunate to have found really great mentors back in Pittsburgh and sponsors since I’ve been here at UCLA last January who have elevated my career and helped me to see that research … is one tool towards this pathway towards justice.

DB: What specific barriers have you seen in access to care, particularly for marginalized communities?

UE: I like to think about that question in three buckets: patient-related, provider-related and system-related barriers. On the patient side, language and being able to have congruency within your language with your provider is a huge access barrier and one that we don’t think about enough. Here’s why I always plug how important it is to diversify our medical workforce, because that actually matters in the health and outcomes of our patients.

I think about provider barriers, and just literally the geographic distance to be able to get to a pharmacy, a cardiology specialist and some of these key clinicians that our patients need access to is a big barrier.

On the system level, the social determinants of health such as education, wealth, housing – housing plays a huge impact on the health that we see every day in our patients – access to food and food insecurity. Those are some of the big, broad buckets I think about when I think about some of the health disparities that I study and take care of.

DB: How do you see technology and medical innovation evolving to better serve diverse populations, and what steps can be taken to ensure that there’s equity in these advancements?

UE: Digital equity is a huge, important topic. It comes from literally the watch that I have on my wrist now being able to detect a condition that I study, which is atrial fibrillation – most common condition in the world. … My research has shown really significant disparities in who gets access to those treatments, and I think it can start with things like technology being able to detect your irregular heart rhythm so that you can get to your doctor in time so you can get started on the necessary treatment.

The challenge on the flip side is cost. So these are not going to be accessible for everyone. The latest technology that a lot of clinics have to be able to actually write their notes using AI or using some of the listening devices that are occurring in clinics may not be accessible to every clinic that’s taking care of the community. As advances come along and become more broadly accessible, thinking about the communities that are left behind and how that actually might have the risk of widening disparities is something that me and a lot of my colleagues are really thinking about. Technology is huge and can be a way to really address some of the subjectivity that brings and worsens disparities.

DB: How can medical professionals become more culturally competent, and why is that so important?

UE: We are missing opportunities to improve health for a lot of people because of the way we interact with patients. It may be implicit for many of us and may not have actually been learned in terms of being culturally competent, culturally sensitive. I think we potentially lose relationships that we could establish really good health with. Again, I mentioned that one of the reasons I came into medicine was seeing those relationships my dad was building with his patients and communities, and those relationships end up reducing high blood pressure, improving diabetes outcomes. … There’s actual data to show that time spent with patients, trust in patients and their providers actually improves health outcomes. That’s why it’s so important.

The how, I think, is the trickier part. Is it a one-off lecture in medical school or nursing school? Is it simulation exams that some of us did during our residency where we actually brought the interns into a sim lab and had a fake patient … and had them actually map out how they’re going to talk to their patient about sensitive issues? … So these are definitely things that I like to think about and talk about, and I think we have a long way to go. At least we’re having this conversation to make sure that future doctors of tomorrow are a lot more culturally competent than maybe me or my classmates.

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Shaun Thomas | Science and health editor
Thomas is the 2024-2025 science and health editor. He was previously a News reporter in 2023-2024. Thomas is a second-year physiological science student from Santa Clarita, California.
Thomas is the 2024-2025 science and health editor. He was previously a News reporter in 2023-2024. Thomas is a second-year physiological science student from Santa Clarita, California.
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