Learning and Leadership at the Crossroads of Medicine and Culture in Ghana
Published 09/19/2025 in Scholar Travel Stipend
Written
by Elizabeth Abatan |
09/19/2025
This summer, I had the chance to travel to Ghana, a place that felt both familiar and new. With West African parents, I grew up hearing stories and watching movies about the markets and cultures within various communities.
However, stepping into Accra’s streets myself, I realized that experiencing it firsthand was not just about reconnecting with my heritage. It was an opportunity for experiential learning and to see how leadership, health, and culture intersect in ways that influence people's lives across Africa. During daily activities, we passed billboards and storefronts, and I observed how the environment was built, carrying meaning beyond mere architecture. I saw an advertisement for powdered milk and processed foods, a celebration of life for community members, highlighting the quiet strength of those who care for the community.
While breast milk is widely recognized as essential for infant health, global marketing pressures often promote packaged formula and powdered milk as modern and the new standard for providing nutrition to babies. This imbalance highlights how health outcomes can extend beyond biology; they can be shaped by social, political, and economic factors. For me, it was a powerful lesson on how structural forces influence even the most personal aspects of care. In the clinics I visited, midwives exemplified leadership in its purest form. They treated patients as if they were family, not just cases. Their role was not limited to delivering babies but also ensuring that women felt supported, safe, and recognized when they left. I saw the same leadership in the market women who sell different produce and also serve as the backbone of household economies and decision-making (Ghana Studies). These women may not hold official titles, but their actions impact the health and well-being of the entire community. 
From an economic perspective, centers like Planned Parenthood globally provide lower-cost services for those in need. I took a picture of the list of services and noticed how much the prices differ from those in the U.S., and I learned that people in nearby countries to Ghana that lack resources would come to receive these services. In Ghana, specifically at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Cape Coast, I observed how the clinic collaborates with the national network to offer proper services and serve an area with the greatest need for less than 70 USD. Unlike the services in the U.S., many clinics have home check-in options and public health nurses who go into the community to follow up with discharged patients and learn about local resources near many patients’ homes.
This perspective resonated with what my professor, Tanay Lynn Harris, often describes as African-centeredness. This is an idea that learning is continuous, collective, and rooted in the community. One of the readings I completed during my time in Ghana, Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman, helped deepen my understanding throughout the experience. I was able to connect the history of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the different rivers and cities that the Ghanaian people honor to this day, and how the displacement still impacts people worldwide. Despite the pain and trauma left on the people, resilience remains woven into their daily lives. It became clear how the culture and storytelling embedded in Africa serve as an enduring vehicle for communication, carrying values that can be shared and applied in global contexts.
Working with Professor Harris and Dr. Lisa Wright, who are leaders in mental health advocacy in Baltimore and around the world, reminded me that there is still much to discover. Research isn't always about confirming what we hope to find; sometimes, it uncovers uncomfortable truths and hidden barriers that block the success of a country's people. These truths are crucial because they create opportunities for accountability, learning, and change. As a lifelong learner, I believe it's essential that we keep exploring ways to understand the complexities and interconnectedness in education, science, culture, and life overall.
In Africa, art and tradition are highly valued as part of education. Beadwork, textiles, and oral histories serve both to preserve culture and to promote innovative health communication. They reminded me that resilience is often embedded in creativity. One of the medical advancements that we were able to see at the University of Ghana School of Public Health was a labor chair that could be adjusted into a bed and portable by Madam Cecilia Ampadu. She served as a midwife for decades and saw that maternal comfort during labor could be enhanced by bringing back the traditional way of delivering by squatting versus lying in bed in the clinic. She emphasized the resilience she had from the development of the chair from wooden by carpenters to stainless steel to implantation into facilities and a continuous push for increasing the amount of the chairs in Ghana's maternal health facilities and potentially globally. This resilience within the people is also mirrored within the body itself, as I was able to learn about the history of the sickle cell trait and how it emerged as an adaptation against malaria. Besides learning about the body, I also saw how locals learned traditional ways to make their land meet their needs.
Like many African countries, Ghana's land is rich in natural resources like plants, fruits, and herbs, which the people have learned to harvest and care for with love. One of the most interesting fruits I learned about was soursop and its many health benefits. I heard from many locals about how including soursop in their medicinal treatment has transformed lives. Herbal medicine is now used in many hospitals in Ghana as an alternative form of treatment, highlighting the importance of traditional culture and ways of life over Westernized approaches. As a student from the Western world, the association with a well-known institution in some settings gave me authority and made me seem like an expert when I was there as a learner. This tension taught me that leadership isn’t always about sharing knowledge; it also means respecting and amplifying the wisdom already present. I decided to visually document parts of this practice, capturing moments where I could highlight and support the work being done in Ghana.
By the end of my time in Ghana, I had observed leadership expressed through various perspectives, from midwives caring for patients to a parliamentarian’s debate. Each exemplified the Milken Foundation’s belief that education, leadership, and community are interconnected pillars of progress. For me, Ghana was a pivotal experience that taught me to lead in medicine with attentive listening, respect for cultural wisdom, and an appreciation for research as a tool to discover truths that benefit humanity. I aspire to continue exploring new possibilities and discovering frameworks that honor the past, acknowledge the present, and shed light on the complexities of spoken and silent truths to build the future. Looking ahead, I plan to further explore Africa and reconnect with my cultural roots in Nigeria, as well as understand how leadership in medicine is practiced there. The experiential learning in Ghana revealed that data, stories, laboratories, traditions, and the marketplace are not separate realms; they are deeply interconnected. As I progress, I value leading in healthcare by integrating these worlds and addressing challenges through solutions that serve the broader community. 
References:
Clark, Gracia. “Consulting Elderly Kumasi Market Women about Modernization.” Ghana Studies, vols. 12–13, 2011.
Hartman, Saidiya. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007
https://twitter.com/eazasi/status/791768889067700224 - Ampadu Chair
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