Dr. Linda Suleiman ’04 - HSC Review 2022

HSCReview

The magazine for the Hillfield Strathallan College community Spring 2022

Doctor of Diversity Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Linda Suleiman ’04 is a champion for health equity

Doctor of Diversity Dr. Linda Suleiman ’04 has made major advances in orthopedic surgery and health equity for at-risk patients in Chicago

By Diane Jermyn Portraits by Martine Severin

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Linda sits in the Sewell Museum at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

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To Dr. Linda Suleiman ’04, building community is a thread that runs throughout her life, beginning when

she was a child living on the family compound in a Somali village just outside Mogadishu.

LINDA WAS BORN IN WASHINGTON, D.C., but her family returned to their homeland when she was three, staying until she was four. As a kid, her happiest childhood memories are there—not of war, but of a community that wrapped itself around her.

“It’s not like you just lived in one house,” says Linda. “Somalia is tribe-based, so you had cousins, second cousins, third cousins, aunts and uncles all living in the same compound.

There were always people in your house.

“That’s what was so much fun about it. You didn’t go home and have dinner with your immediate family—it was with everybody.”

As Somalia’s civil war resurged, the family left again in the early 1990s. At the time, Canada was one of the few places open to Somali refugees, and her parents, both educated professionals, were able to move first to Fort Erie and then to Hamilton—her mother wanted a city with other Somali refugees. But those early Somali experiences made an impression.

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“IT WAS A WONDERFUL COMMUNITY,” Linda recalls.

“Looking back, it’s shaped how I’ve always run my life, by building community around me because that’s how I thrive.”

That sense of community is still with her in the world of orthopedic surgery, where she is now a leader and diversity champion.

Based in Chicago, Linda in 2018 became the first African American woman faculty member appointed to the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Northwestern Medicine hospital system, affiliated with Northwestern University where she has also been assistant dean of medical education for its Feinberg School of Medicine since 2020. She further serves as director of diversity, equity and inclusion at Feinberg, with over 1,300 residents and fellows. And as a surgeon, she is one of only seven Black women in the United States who specialize in adult hip and knee replacement and reconstructive surgery.

Already, after only three years in the hospital job, Linda’s passion for improving health equity is transforming how care is delivered for underserved and socially vulnerable patients in the area’s at-risk communities, where there’s a huge need for joint replacement.

“The discrepancies and health inequities I saw within orthopedics is what led me to diversity work,” says Linda. “Now we’re making sure that we’re recruiting underrepresented minorities and retaining them on faculty. We’re also educating our physicians on how to provide equitable care for all our patients.”

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Linda in the operating room.

Linda also advocates for Black patients who often have medical complexities or other challenges that might typically result in them being turned down for surgery for degenerative joint disease. Many are Black women who will travel simply to have a surgeon who looks like them that they can feel more comfortable with.

“Everyone should have a fair shot at doing what they want to be doing functionally,” says Linda. “It’s important to have different perspectives, to be able to understand diverse backgrounds. When I started, we didn’t have bias training, so we were expecting our physicians to take care of a diverse patient population without any education about it. I want to change that.”

Under Linda’s leadership, the number of graduate medical trainees from underrepresented groups has increased from 14 per cent to one quarter of the incoming class in residency and fellowships.

In developing a bias-free curriculum, Linda wanted them above all not to make presumed judgments prior to really understanding a patient’s needs.

“We’re making sure that we’re recruiting underrepresented minorities and retaining them on faculty. We’re also educating our physicians on how to provide equitable care for all our patients.”

“My goal for our trainees is to ‘know your bias’ so that you’re consciously making an effort to change that perception when you interact with patients who may not look like you, because it affects your medical decisions and how you communicate with patients,” she says. “We are seeing change and an incredible amount of allyship from our house staff. We’re not letting it fall by the wayside.”

As an educator and diversity leader, Linda has also expanded faculty support and mentoring for her students and fellows, creating an inclusive, welcoming community where everyone can feel they belong. In this regard, much of Linda’s inspiration comes from her mother, who wasn’t able to practise as an anesthesiologist in Canada because her degree wasn’t recognized. So she started helping other refugees.

“Once we settled in Hamilton, my mom ended up working in immigration services welcoming other Somalis who were new to Hamilton,” Linda says. “It seemed like we always had a newly arrived family member or friend staying with us, so we kept that connection.”

Hillfield Strathallan College was another influence. When her mom heard about HSC being a really good school, she was determined that Linda and her siblings attend, despite an expense that meant working additional jobs.

Linda started in Grade 4, along with her brother Abdullah ’03 and sister Patricia ’07. All were into sports, and Linda joined the soccer and basketball teams.

“I had a really good experience at HSC,” says Linda. “I made some great friends and it helped build my leadership skills. I never felt my skin colour or culture was an issue. While it was noticeable—there were no other Black students in my grade—it wasn’t a barrier.

“The education was very centred around understanding people, different cultures and human rights—you were exposed to the world, such as participating in the Model United Nations. It felt very inclusive to me for those reasons.”

Sports provided another inclusive environment, with national soccer tournaments, hosting students at home and being hosted by other families.

“The thing about HSC was that it was always building community around you, which has resonated with me since I was a young kid,” she says. “It shaped me moving forward. And then, always helping the person behind you. The mentorship from coaches and teachers taught me that, so I need to do the same.

“My basketball coach, Christine Ellis, was a powerhouse who instilled discipline, leadership and confidence in the women on our team. The coaches had a significant impact on our personal and professional development—including what we wanted to do with our lives beyond sports.”

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FOR LINDA, that meant becoming a doctor like her mom. By high school, she was devouring the advanced level biology, physics and math classes that were available at HSC to prepare her for university.

“Loving science and wanting to help others moulded my interest in medicine,” says Linda.

“My mom would talk about her experience of helping patients and I wanted to have that same joy of helping someone else.”

Linda chose the University of Maryland because when she walked onto that campus, she saw so many students who looked like her.

That kind of Black representation was missing when she visited universities in Canada. “I felt I would thrive a little better with a more diverse university experience,” she says. “And I had grown up visiting the Washington, D.C., area because my mother’s siblings and cousins live there.”

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“The thing about HSC was that it was always building community around you, which has resonated with me since I was a young kid. It shaped me moving forward.”

With cardiologist husband Dr. Quentin Youmans.

At work in the OR.

When it came to choosing a medical school after Maryland, Linda thought back to HSC with its small classes where you knew everybody. “I picked Howard University because it had class sizes of only 100 students,” she says.

“Then when I walked those halls and saw the history of Black surgeons and physicians on the walls, I knew Howard was the right experience for me.”

At Howard, Linda was matched with an orthopedic surgeon, shadowing him during her first year. When Northwestern accepted Linda in the orthopedic residency program, she was the first Black woman ever to train there.

“I had fantastic mentorship from the surgeons who are now my partners,” she says. “Your gender or skin colour didn’t matter. They just wanted you to become the best orthopedic surgeon you could become.”

While a resident at Northwestern’s McGaw Medical Center, she became president of the Northwestern Underrepresented Residents and Fellows Forum, leading to the diversity work she does today. What she takes away from all her years of education is the importance of building relationships, including from her time at HSC.

“Because classes were small, you couldn’t just ignore the person sitting next to you,” says Linda. “Someone may not look like you or like the same things you do, but build a relationship and you’ll always learn something from that individual.”

Linda currently lives in Chicago with her husband, Dr. Quentin Youmans, a chief fellow in cardiology at Northwestern University, and their two-year-old daughter Yama. Social media has made it easy to stay connected with old friends in Canada or living around the world. “I’m following what HSC is doing online and seeing how diversity, equity and inclusion has become a priority,” says Linda.

“I’m excited to see there’s a Black Students’ Association now.”

Her message to HSC students is to continue building a community around yourself wherever you go and to appreciate people’s differences.

“Being a teenager can be hard, because you’re at a time in your life where people’s differences can be called out,” she says.

“But try to really understand everybody’s individuality. Take a piece of someone and try to incorporate it into yourself so you can understand them.”

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