In 158 years, the Canadian Medical Association has had no Black president. On May 29, Dr. Bolu Ogunyemi, a 39-year-old dermatologist from St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, became the first.
He is also among the youngest people to hold the job, and the first president to have graduated from Memorial University’s medical school. He succeeds Dr. Margot Burnell and now serves as the association’s main public voice for the country’s physicians.
Ogunyemi came to Newfoundland and Labrador from Nigeria as a child in the late 1980s, with his parents and older brother. His father became the province’s first epilepsy specialist. His mother opened one of the first stores in the province selling African hair accessories, according to Memorial University. He trained at Memorial, where he later became a clinical associate professor and assistant dean of social accountability, a post focused on health disparities. He has also served on the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Ethics Consultative Group and on the board of the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association.
The stake for Black Canadians is in who is treating them. Ogunyemi has tied his presidency to that gap. “I’m hoping that, in the future, the composition of physicians in our country more closely reflects the patients that we’re called to serve,” he said.
He has said he wants the platform to do more than set policy. “As the primary spokesperson of the Canadian Medical Association, I hope to use this position not only to influence policy but to promote understanding that diverse backgrounds make policy and advocacy efforts more inclusive and more effective,” he said.
His stated priorities are strengthening primary care, cutting the administrative load on doctors and bringing new technology into patient care responsibly. He also backs care delivered closer to home. “Patients heal from illness in a hospital, but they truly become well in their communities,” he said, adding that community-based practice needs greater support.
He has drawn on his home province’s history in making that case. Newfoundland and Labrador absorbed the 1992 cod moratorium and now has an aging population and a strained health system, and he has pointed to that experience as a guide for national problems.
Ogunyemi took office on May 29 as the association’s president and its public spokesperson on health policy.
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