Dr Philip Ozuah is a renowned Nigerian paediatrician who has redefined pediatric healthcare in the Bronx and now heads one of the world’s most important and prestigious clinical and administrative positions. His may not be the typical grass-to-grace story. Still, he managed to overturn what many would regard as a socially and educationally crippling condition, to become one of the most important healthcare practitioners in the world.
So, what is this condition? It is called stuttering, a speech problem that has confined many to become butts of jokes to friends, family and foes alike since they find it difficult to pronounce common words. In other words, Dr Ozuah was a stutterer and he had to deal with being put down by some of his senior colleagues due to his accent and stutter.
Below is a biography of the Nigerian stutterer who overcame all odds to become the success story he is today.
Philip Ozuah biography
Phillip Ozuah was born in 1960 in Lagos State, Nigeria. At the age of 14, he enrolled into the University of Ibadan to study Medicine. After graduating, he did his housemanship at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital before proceeding to Southern California for his Master’s programme. He completed his Pediatric Internship and Residency at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore.
Ozuah holds a PhD in Educational Leadership and Administration from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He also completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Southern California School of Medicine.
Philip Ozuah career
Dr Ozuah started practising pediatric medicine at The Bronx at Montefiore Medical Center, the umbrella organisation for the Albert Einstein College of Medicine where he has worked for most of his entire career. In his first year on his job, Dr Ozuah encountered discrimination due to his stuttering. He was made fun of and called unintelligent by some of his senior colleagues. Also, he struggled to get people to recognise him for who he was and to call him by his name.
A physician, leader, executive, researcher, teacher and author, Dr Ozuah has risen to become the President and CEO of Montefiore Medicine, overseeing Montefiore Health System’s 13 member hospitals, 300 ambulatory sites and 7.5 million patient encounters per year. He also leads an organisation with 10,000 physicians and 53,000 employees serving a diverse group of patients.
The award-winning educator also served as professor and University Chairman of Pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief of Children’s Hospital at Montefiore (CHAM). Under his leadership, Montefiore has expanded access to care for underserved communities, recruited and trained outstanding talent, advanced programmes of excellence and fostered innovations in medicine and science. Dr Ozuah also improved the financial and operational performance of the organisation by integrating care across a rapidly growing and evolving Montefiore system, with $8 billion in annual revenues.
As a result, Montefiore Health System’s specialities have ranked in the top one per cent of U.S. hospitals. CHAM was also recognised as one of “America’s Best Children’s Hospitals”, according to U.S. News & World Report.
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Philip Ozuah Awards/Recognition
Dr Ozuah’s outstanding work in paediatrics has earned him globally recognised awards and acclaim. They are as follows:
- Twice named as one of the “Top Physician Executives” in the US by Modern Healthcare
- Inductee into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society
- Two-time recipient of the Academic Pediatric Association’s prestigious Helfer Award for Innovation in Medical Education.
- Recipient of the AIS Free Voices Changing Lives Award in 2023
Philip Ozuah’s Connection To Nigeria
Although Dr Ozuah was born in Lagos, he hails from Anambra State. His father was an engineer and his mother was a school principal in Nigeria. Ozuah was raised in a family where formal education was deemed important. Hence, his elder brother became the first member of the family to travel to America to attend university.
According to Furst Group, Dr Ozuah himself travelled to the US intending to get extra training in medicine before returning to Nigeria to collaborate with his father on building a hospital, which he would run.
However, the plan evaporated when he encountered a staggering degree of poverty in the US.
“Obviously, I came to the U.S. from a place where there’s immense poverty on the one hand and immense wealth on the other, and they could be juxtaposed right next to each other,” he explained to Furst Group.
“But there is an image of the U.S. as the richest country in the world, which it is. And so, the extent of some of the privation here can initially be puzzling. You say, ‘How can this be?’”
Philip Ozuah philanthropy
Under Dr Ozuah’s leadership, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine received a $1 billion donation from Ruth Gottesman, a former professor at Einstein, where she studied learning disabilities, developed a screening test and ran literacy programmes. She is also the widow to the late David Gottesman, known as Sandy, who was a protégé of Warren Buffett and had made an early investment in Berkshire Hathaway.
The donation is regarded as one of the largest charitable donations to an educational institution in the United States and most likely the largest to a medical school. It was gifted to be used to cover tuition for all students. Gottesman’s staggering donation is understood to be a result of her friendship with Dr Ozuah, who reportedly made dedicated house calls to check on her and her husband during his illness.
Both Gottesman and Ozuah first met on a flight in 2020 and developed a friendship that has become beneficial not only to them but to the entire Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Albert Einstein College of Medicine is located in The Bronx, New York’s poorest location where there is a high rate of premature deaths. The Bronx ranks as the unhealthiest county in New York.
Meanwhile, Dr Ozuah has not forgotten his homeland. He recently donated $1 million for the rehabilitation of buildings at his alma mater, the University of Ibadan Medical College.
Philip Ozuah age
Dr Ozuah is 64 years old as of 2024.
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