For Concord native Jamaji Nwanaji-Enwerem, completing his residency in emergency medicine at Emory University in Atlanta in June was the culmination of over two decades of work as a so-called professional student.

But more than that, a common thread throughout his medical career, both at Emory, where he worked at Grady Memorial Hospital, and almost a decade prior at Harvard University (attending Harvard Medical School for his MD, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Science for his PhD, and Harvard Kennedy School of Government for a Master’s in Public Policy), has been a commitment to a guiding philosophy his parents instilled in him and his siblings.

“As long as you are dedicated to helping others and making life better for others, everything else will work itself out,” Jamaji said his parents told him.

That philosophy has been evident across all aspects of his life.

From serving as student body president during his final years at Concord Middle and Concord High, to advocating for more equitable environmental health outcomes through platforms such as serving on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, and working with organizations including the World Health Organization (WHO), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and NASA, Jamaji, 34, has worked to better the lives of those around him and throughout the world.

While at Emory, for example, Jamaji focused on emergency medicine because it is “literally one of the areas of medicine that most interfaces with society, so if there is a major accident, if there is a wildfire, if there is a respiratory virus, those patients often times will first present to the emergency department.”

During his graduation from Emory, Jamaji reflected on his life’s journey thus far, from leaving his native Nigeria as an infant, to achieving two doctorates and a master’s from Harvard University, to completing his residency (which began during the pandemic).

“To my communities, this is your victory & my promise to continue working to leave the world better than we found it,” Jamaji posted on social media.

The power of scientific research

Ever since he was a young child, Jamaji aspired to practice medicine. Much of the inspiration came from his family, as his mom and maternal grandmother were both nurses, but also from growing up in both Concord and West Africa.

“I had a front row seat to what happens when folks don’t have access to healthcare,” he said, noting that health disparities can impact whole families and even communities.

With a passion for helping others combined with an interest and proficiency in math and science (Jamaji was involved in the Cabarrus Soil and Water Conservation District public speaking contest and focused on robotics in the operating room for his high school senior project), pursuing a career in the medical field just made sense.

While working toward his undergraduate degree in biology at Morehouse College, a private historically Black, men’s liberal arts college in Atlanta and the alma mater of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Jamaji discovered an interest not only in wanting to practice medicine but also in contributing to existing biomedical research in meaningful ways.

He recalls taking part in a summer project focused on Hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia, also known as HHT, a rare genetic disorder that affects blood vessels throughout the body.

He had previously researched the disorder, and as he went to a symposium to share some of his findings, Jamaji spoke with a woman who had HHT.

“She walked me through her story about the fact that it’s research like the research I was performing that gave her hope that she would be able to continue to manage her illness,” Jamaji said.

That encounter, along with others, illustrated to Jamaji that while there is power in medicine to heal people who are sick, “scientific research is really the engine that continues to push medicine to spaces where it can help more and more people.”

A focus on environmental health concerns

Following his time at Morehouse, Jamaji challenged himself by applying to one of the most prestigious schools in the world: Harvard.

Gaining admission into the school’s medical school is an incredible achievement in itself. Harvard Medical School accepted only 222 individuals, or 3.2%, out of the roughly 7,000 people who applied in 2023.

“The weight of being accepted really hit me after I spoke with my father and he told me that I was probably the first person from my village in Nigeria who had the opportunity to attend Harvard,” Jamaji said. “I remain committed to making that opportunity count for so many.”

At Harvard, besides his work as a medical student, Jamaji’s interest in environmental research and advocacy blossomed.

“There are exposures that we all live with and I knew that they affected everyone, including family that I had down in the south and family that I had back in West Africa, but it wasn’t really a large component of what I was learning in medical school,” he said.

Over time, Jamaji realized that while one-to-one patient interactions will always be critical, environmental health concerns — whether it be water crises affecting communities like Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, or key infrastructure, such as hospitals, struggling to withstand the effects of climate-related disasters — have the potential to affect large swaths of people.

“There’s a magic in being able to impact the health of a population as a whole,” Jamaji said.

With global temperatures continuing to increase, the effects of climate change are putting more people at risk. Extreme heat stress, for example, can be a potential threat to anyone, regardless of age or physical fitness, though it is especially dangerous for people with pre-existing health conditions, like kidney disease or hypertension.

“These extremes that we’re experiencing can really be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Jamaji said.

There are many potential exposures that people are likely unaware of — such as inhaling fumes and exhaust while residing near a major highway, drinking water contaminated with heavy metals or even living in an area with a lot of ambient noise.

“All of these different facets in our environment — exposure to radiation, exposure to heat, exposure to pollution — all of these environmental exposures really do have impacts on all of us, healthy and not,” Jamaji said. Many of the individuals who are most disproportionally affected by these exposures are often people of lower socioeconomic status.

Jamaji experienced firsthand what can happen when critical infrastructure is not able to withstand weather-related challenges. On Dec. 24, 2022, Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta experienced flooding as a result of “a cold-exacerbated malfunction” in the hospital’s heating and cooling coils.

Temperatures were around 8 degrees Fahrenheit, which “made for Atlanta’s coldest Christmas Eve in almost a decade,” Jamaji wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

At least two inches of water quickly accumulated on the second and third floors of the hospital and water was flowing into the emergency department, which includes the trauma center.

Jamaji was working with a patient that day who had suffered a stroke and needed a CT scan.

“We had to wait longer than we normally would because there was a line backed up with people who were equally as sick and needed that scanner,” Jamaji said, noting another CT scanner was not working due to the flooding.

Jamaji concluded in his JAMA article that “Although Grady Memorial Hospital survived the most recent and past floods, the nation, along with cities and states, must do all that is possible to mitigate future climate-related disasters for its safety-net hospitals.”

Continuing to help others

While Jamaji’s medical journey has been difficult and demanding, he has always kept to the forefront the advice his parents instilled in him to be a force of positive change in the world.

“Along the way, I remember that mantra and so as long as I’m doing work that’s helping others ... then I’m doing the right thing,” he said.

Jamaji will be leaving Atlanta in the coming weeks as he has accepted a faculty position at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He will continue to practice emergency medicine and pursue his environmental health research and policy work.

While he’s thankful for all the opportunities he’s had, Jamaji is also aware of the responsibilities that have been placed on his shoulders.

“I feel like so many people have invested so much in me and I have invested so much in myself,” he said. “I really want to maximize the impact of that, not for me personally but to make the world better and to make people’s lives better.”