Wayne State University School of Medicine Warrior M.D. Class of 2024 student Cedric Mutebi has won the 2022 OnlineMedEd Scholarship for Future Black Physicians.
The $12,000 award is given to one student annually. A third-year student, Mutebi impressed the selection committee with his application and “on-the-ground” work and advocacy in Detroit.
“I feel extremely honored to have received the award. As I mentioned in my submission, we do this work on the shoulders of many Black physicians who came before us and we are just carrying on that legacy,” Mutebi said.
OnlineMedEd.org is a web-based educational platform founded in 2020 by doctors who wanted to create and share free medical education videos for medical students, residents and faculty on a variety of topics and medical specialties. Its mission is to elevate health care education to create better providers by addressing not just excellence in training, but also biases in medicine that contribute to health outcome disparities. This is the second such scholarship the organization has awarded since its founding.
“He’s working at every level to enact and advocate changes that will make our health care system stronger,” Jamie Fitch, OnlineMedEd’s co-founder and chief executive said of Mutebi. “He’s a model example for the next generation of physicians that we seek to empower.”
Mutebi is a first-generation Ugandan-American and co-founder of “Healing Between the Lines,” a groundbreaking antiracism sub-curriculum that was part of WSU’s Undergraduate and Graduate Medical Education studies last year.
The effort educates medical students and residents on the historical intersection of systemic racism and health by exploring and untangling the impact of redlining – systemic denial of services – on the health outcomes of Detroit communities, and trains them to strategically utilize their voices and expertise in collaboration with community partners to fight against present-day manifestations of historical systemic injustice through community-led advocacy.
Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine-Pediatrics Ijeoma Nnodim Opara, M.D., is the project’s faculty mentor, and directs Health Equity and Justice in Medicine.
“My experience mentoring Cedric has revealed to me that he is a young man of incredible character, innovation, character and most of all, leadership,” Dr. Nnodim Opara said. “Cedric leads with humility. He’s very organized, forward thinking, and always thinking about the big picture as a whole while keeping the details in mind. Cedric always finds a way to rise above situations and transcend really minor, trivial details, the small stuff as we call it, that tends to derail us from our path of excellence. His greatest strength is his heart. He is so caring of others in a way that overlooks your flaws and weaknesses, and is always able to see the good in every situation and every person in order to, again, keep the big picture in mind.”
A public health graduate, Mutebi made his way into medical school through Wayne State’s Med-Direct program, started in 2016 under the guidance of WSU President M. Roy Wilson.