Leading National Change as a Medical Trainee with Joel Bervell

Joel Bervell is a third year Ghanaian-American medical student at Washington State University. 

Joel graduated from Yale University, where he served as an elected member of Yale student government, and director of a longitudinal mentorship program based in low-income neighborhoods. He completed a Masters in Medical Science at Boston University and spent a year working as a clinical research assistant at Providence Hospital. 

At Washington State University, Joel served as Medical Student Council President and the co-founder and president of a chapter of the Student National Medical Association. He is also the founder and director of the Coug Health Academic Mentoring Program, a mentoring program dedicated to increasing the number of underrepresented students interested in medicine. 

He has been invited to speak to national organizations such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Clinton Foundation, Network of the National Library of Medicine. He has also spoken on well-known media outlets including Good Morning America, NPR, YahooNews and WebMd. He currently is working with the World Health Organization’s Digital Communications Team with a collection of health professionals combating the spread of misinformation on social media about COVID-19, and on a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion project with the VA Hospital systems.

Joel is committed to fighting health disparities in medicine through education and regularly shares topics about racial disparities/ biases in healthcare and other industries on his TikTok and Instagram (@joelbervell). Joel has been named by TikTok as the top 2021 “Voice for Change,” was featured by TikTok as one of 10 “Changemakers” on their inaugural Discover List, named as one of ten recipients of the 50K MACRO x TikTok Black Creatives Grant, and was a nominee for the AdColor Awards. 

He is the recipient of the National Medical Association’s Emerging Scholar Award. Joel has served in an advisory role on the boards of multiple organizations including the National Student Response Network, Hope in A Box, and the Ron Brown Leaders Network Council.

Welcome to Leading the Rounds!

Questions We Asked: 

• How did you get started using media platforms to promote change? 
• How have you been able to manage social media with being a 3rd year medical student? 
• Have you always been comfortable speaking in public? 
• How have you been able to use your voice as a medical student to affect change?
• How have you felt being a young professional speaking to experts?  
• Have you struggled with imposter syndrome when speaking out for change? 
• What are biases that we see in medicine? 
• How do we discuss genetics vs race in medicine? 
• What is your outlook with our generation in terms of eliminating health disparities? 
• What advice would you have for trainees who want to create change? 

Quotes & Ideas: 

• Use social media as an extension of yourself. Be true to who you are. 
• Medical students can make an impact on changing what we are taught in medical school 
• Medical students have been instrumental to rethinking pulse oximetry, eGFR, and diversity in medical imaging 
• Levels of bias in medicine: 
  • Medical education- Risk factors 
  • Systematic biases- Race based medicine, disease equations, etc. 
  • Educational materials- Dermatology textbooks 

Book Suggestions: 

• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Atul Gawande books 
• The Color of Law Richard Rothstein
• Shoe Dog by Phil Knight 
• How to be an Anti-Racist Ibram X. Kendi