Thomas Jefferson University appoints its first Black medical school dean, a doctor with local ties and a background in diversity efforts

Thomas Jefferson University has named its first Black medical school dean, Said A. Ibrahim, a physician whose research centers on health equity and disparities and who has a background in internal medicine, public health, and diversity and inclusion efforts.

Ibrahim, who has worked at several major health systems, including the University of Pennsylvania and Weill Cornell Medicine and has degrees from Harvard, MIT and Case Western, also will become the only top Black dean at the region’s seven medical colleges when he takes over at the Sidney Kimmel Medical College on Dec. 1. At the six others, the deans are white, and all but two are men.

Ibrahim, who also was appointed president of Jefferson University Physicians, was not available for comment Wednesday, a Jefferson spokesperson said. His selection was announced to Jefferson staff, faculty and students on Tuesday.

“Dr. Ibrahim is just an extremely accomplished physician, scientist and educator, and we believe both our students and our faculty are going to greatly benefit from his expertise,” Susan C. Aldridge, the university’s interim president, said in an interview Wednesday.

Both Aldridge and Joseph G. Cacchione, Jefferson’s CEO, cited his “strong commitment to fostering innovation, collaboration and inclusivity within the medical community.”

He will lead the medical college into its 200th anniversary next year, with a keen focus on increasing diversity among students, faculty and staff, she said. Aldridge said he will help with the recruitment process of all three.

Ibrahim, 61, currently works at Northwell Health, New York’s largest health-care provider, where he is senior vice president of its Medicine Service Line, a position he’s held for two years, according to his LinkedIn profile. In that role, he also is chair of the Department of Medicine at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset and the School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, Jefferson’s announcement said.

» READ MORE: Jefferson medical students say president’s Twitter activity signifies a larger diversity problem

At Weill Cornell Medicine, where he worked for more than three years, he was the inaugural senior associate dean for diversity and inclusion, a professor of health-care policy and research, and founding chief of the Division of Healthcare Delivery Science and Innovation.

He has centered his research on examining health-care disparities among different demographic groups, an interest nurtured when he was growing up in Somalia. In his research on osteoarthritis, he found that African Americans are 40% less likely to choose elective surgery for knee and hip replacements, according to a 2020 article in the Cornell Daily Sun, the student newspaper.

“Having grown up in East Africa, I understand firsthand how inequalities in health care access can significantly affect people’s lives,” he said in a 2018 announcement on Weill Cornell Medicine’s website. “Diversity and inclusion — things that people had fought passionately for during the civil rights movement — made it possible for someone like me to attend medical school in the United States. It’s important to me that we maintain and grow that kind of opportunity for everyone.”

He told the student newspaper that he’s “a strong believer in the idea that one of the ways we can reduce inequalities in health care is to create a diverse workforce in health care.”

Ibrahim has Philadelphia ties, previously working for eight years at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and serving as chief of medicine at Philadelphia’s VA Medical Center. The announcement about Ibrahim on Weill Cornell’s website noted that he provided primary care to American veterans for 20 years.

He will continue to do research at Jefferson, while serving as dean, Aldridge said.

“Not only will his research benefit Thomas Jefferson University and Sidney Kimmel Medical College, his research is going to benefit Philadelphia and the nation,” Aldridge said.

» READ MORE: New dean at Thomas Jefferson University’s medical school continues revamp of top management

The announcement comes after some medical school students raised concerns about diversity after Mark Tykocinski, the college’s former interim dean and president, “liked” controversial tweets about COVID-19 vaccines, gender-affirming surgery for children, and diversity efforts on college campuses.

About a half-dozen organizations representing medical students from LGBTQ and underrepresented racial groups at Jefferson called on the administration to take specific steps to improve diversity efforts and publicly hold the president accountable for his social media activity, which they saw as emblematic of a larger problem at the school.

Tykocinski’s “actions have harmed students’ trust in the institution’s commitment to its mission,” they wrote.

Tykocinski, who said he was only liking the tweets to bookmark them and learn more, resigned in July after only a year on the job. Steven Herrine is serving as interim dean of the medical college.

In U.S. News and World Report’s 2023 “Most Diverse Medical Schools” rankings, published in May, Jefferson’s medical college placed 115th of 130 medical schools nationally.

Jefferson at the time said it was taking students’ concerns seriously and that conversations between university leaders and the students were ongoing as the school worked to address their concerns.

Aldridge said on Wednesday that the university was celebrating the hire of Ibrahim.

“Dozens and dozens of phone calls, emails, comments in meetings,” she said. “A number of our students and staff stopped me to say they can’t wait to meet him.”

The university has been searching for a new medical school dean for just over a year. Ibrahim was selected from among three finalists.

The son of a police officer and homemaker in Somalia, Ibrahim was one of 10 children, whose family survived on his father’s salary of about $50 a month, according to an article on Weill Cornell Medicine’s website. The 6-foot-8 Ibrahim once played for the Somalia national basketball team.

When he was recruited to play basketball for Cleveland State in the mid-1980s, he saw it as a chance to attend college in the United States, the article said.

But his tryout didn’t go well and he was faced with having to return to Africa. Determined to pursue his dream, he got help from a legal aid attorney who helped him enroll at Oberlin College, where he earned his bachelor’s degree.

Ibrahim went on to get his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He also has a master’s in public health from Harvard University’s School of Public Health and a master’s in business administration from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

He did his internship and residency training in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.

Ibrahim recognizes that there aren’t a lot of others who look like him in medical school leadership.

“I often find myself to be the only African American in conferences of 200, 300 people,” he said in the interview with the student newspaper. “I’m always inspired by the possibility that I have to do this in order to be a role model for others who feel that they don’t belong here.”

Staff writer Victoria Ke Li contributed to this article.