Tolu Aduroja, an associate professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Alabama Birmingham, is a native of Nigeria. He earned his medical degree at the University of Ibadan. He came to the United States when his wife, an African American who had moved to Nigeria as a teenager, received a job offer in Atlanta.
In the United States, Dr. Aduroja began a residency in psychiatry in Atlanta and entered the master of public health program at the University of Alabama Birmingham. After completing his degree in 2005, he joined the faculty at UAB. But Dr. Aduroja returns to Nigeria each fall working with an organization he founded called Maternal Cords. Three other doctors, two who are also graduates of the public health program at UAB, see hundreds of patients at a free clinic in Ibadan. “We treated malaria, infestation, gastric infections, high blood pressure, hernias, and much more,” Dr. Aduroja reports.
The visiting doctors pay the cost of the trip themselves, about $15,000 per year. Dr. Aduroja is currently in the doctoral program in public health at UAB. His research is focuses on obesity and eating disorders among children in the Birmingham public schools.
