February is national Heart Health Awareness Month as well as Black History Month and the Adjei-Poku family has got both covered.
Dr. Michael Adjei-Poku and his son, Dr. Yaw Adjei-Poku, are both cardiologists, while Michael’s wife, Gladys Adjei-Poku, is a Ph.D. of nursing and manages the medical and surgical departments at Lovelace Medical Center.
The family came from Ghana, on Africa’s west coast, and all of them work within the Lovelace Health System, which includes the New Mexico Heart Institute and the Heart Hospital of New Mexico. It is the first time the three family members have worked for the same health care system. (A younger son, Michael Jr., just completed his master’s degree in public health at the University of Pennsylvania and intends to become a physician.)
Yaw came to New Mexico and joined Lovelace six years ago, while his parents arrived two years ago.
But the journey from Ghana to Albuquerque has been a long one.
“I came (to the U.S.) initially when I was in my last year of medical school, but I had visited my brother in Louisiana several times before I moved there in 1986,” Michael Sr. said. “Living in Louisiana, I was aware of the tension between Blacks and whites. You just get used to it. It wasn’t really a problem for me.”
Gladys and Yaw joined him in 1988, leaving Ghana on Yaw’s 6th birthday. Gladys worked at hospitals in New York, Rhode Island and Salt Lake City before moving to New Mexico.
“I had an accent that I was frequently reminded of, but not in a bad way,” she said of her initial interactions with Americans. “People wanted to know where that accent was from. I’m a very gregarious person and open up freely, so I was happy to share my culture with them and it actually attracted more friends to me.”
‘I was the only Black doctor’
Michael completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at the New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens, and his fellowship training in cardiology at the University of Utah Health Sciences Center in Salt Lake City.
Before joining the University of Utah School of Medicine faculty, he worked as a staff cardiologist at the HCA-St. Mark’s Hospital in Salt Lake City. For the last five years, he taught at the University of Utah School of Medicine as an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Pediatrics.
“I moved to Utah in 1995, and at the university hospital where I trained and Gladys was a nurse, I was the only Black doctor,” Michael said. “My professors made me feel at home, even though patients sometimes would express some reservation about being seen by a Black doctor. But for the most part, people were open and friendly and very accepting, and that made us comfortable.”
Yaw, an electrophysiologist specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of abnormal heart rhythms, recalls being the only Black student at the private high school he attended in Utah, “until my cousin moved to Utah and attended the same high school.”
As a doctor he has occasionally encountered situations in which people would immediately assume he wasn’t a physician because he was Black.
While training at a clinic in Boston, Yaw was asked to consult with a patient concerning a heart rhythm problem. “He was in the emergency room with his son and I came in to see the patient, and the son said, ‘Oh, are you here to transport my dad to get an X-ray?'”
For the most part, however, Yaw said he never encountered the type of blatant racism and discrimination that is sometimes highlighted in news reports.
“And I don’t think my parents have, either, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t say we notice that there aren’t a lot of African Americans in our position. I think you sort of notice that there are not a lot of Black cardiologists here. In fact, there are probably more electrophysiologists at one hospital in Boston than in the whole state of New Mexico.”
Practicing medicine in New Mexico
Yaw came to Lovelace six years ago from Boston, taking a position with the same medical group where his father had turned down a job years earlier. “My dad had interviewed here right around the time that the Heart Hospital was built, but he decided against leaving Salt Lake City because I would have had to move for my senior year of high school, and then move again for college,” he said.
Michael and Gladys decided to move to New Mexico two years ago, partly to be closer to their grandchildren, Yaw’s two children.
“One of my senior partners jokes that he hired my parents to make sure that I’d stay,” said Yaw.
And there is plenty to keep them all busy in New Mexico, particularly on the heart health front.
“The population is sicker here than what I dealt with in Utah,” said Michael. “People don’t take care of themselves, they don’t eat well and the prevalence of drug use is very high.”
Also prevalent is obesity and diabetes. Consequently, he said he is seeing more and younger people with heart issues — primarily coronary artery disease.
Another challenge in New Mexico is access to care. “It’s not uncommon to have patients in New Mexico drive for hundreds of miles to come just for a consult,” Yaw said. And because of issues related to access and poverty, many people are less likely to seek medical care.
New Mexico health care is also impacted by language barriers, said Gladys.
“Many of the patients I come in contact with either speak a different language, or English is not their primary language,” she said. “And that emotionally brings me closer to them because English is not my primary language, either. I understand where they’re coming from so I seek help for them and we’re often looking for interpreters.”
Giving back to Ghana
Family members have returned periodically to Ghana, bringing expertise and equipment to provide care and perform medical procedures. Most recently, they have organized telehealth Zoom conferences for the benefit of the Ghanian community in North America as well as for people in Ghana.
“The last time we did it was about six weeks ago, and 418 people tuned in as we talked about heart attacks, diabetes, weight control and diet,” said Gladys, who also has a degree in nutrition.
“Because I’m able to provide for my family and make friends who are also multicultural, I feel more like many Americans who have similar stories,” she said. “I’m part of an extended family in my native country and the matriarch of my own family here in America. The two are not mutually exclusive, and it gives me and my family two different world views and perspectives — and it makes me a more holistic person.”
Ten tips for maintaining a healthy heart
- Stay active and aim for at least 30 minutes of exercise daily
- Reduce stress (listen to music, read, meditate)
- Maintain healthy social and family relationships
- Increase daily intake of fruits and vegetables
- Limit intake of fast foods and sodas
- Limit alcohol consumption
- Don’t smoke, and if you do, quit
- Stay hydrated
- Try to get eight hours of sleep each night
- Be sure to get routine health care check-ups
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