I learned really early on to push back against the racial stereotypes.
Joel Bervell—pronounced Jo-EL Ber-VELL—has a name that sounds like a chant. During middle school in Mukilteo, Washington State, his favorite teachers would shout it out in the hallways whenever they saw him, a celebratory affirmation that warmed his heart and boosted his confidence. In fact, they still cheer whenever he returns for a visit. Except now they gather in a greeting committee at the entrance as he approaches the building.
Bervell is 29 and in his last year of studying medicine at Washington State University Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, but he has already made a notable impact on public health. Using a combination of social media savvy, storytelling chops, and scientific rigor, Bervell is known on TikTok as the Medical Mythbuster, an approachable and equable health-equality crusader whose fact-driven, deeply researched videos deconstruct various kinds of racial bias in the medical field for his 719,000+ followers.
Topics range from misdiagnoses (such as inaccurate kidney treatments) to cultural misperceptions (“Black people can’t swim”). His videos have saved lives and helped countless people get better care because they provide the kind of knowledge and language that enable patients to advocate for themselves.
What makes Bervell’s work so effective is his genius for providing context. He swiftly subverts medical norms and standards by filling in the pieces that we never knew were missing in the first place. It’s like looking at a picture with a shallow depth of field and suddenly seeing the background emerge. Bervell allows us to look at medicine through a different lens—he brings unseen racial, class, and gender discrimination into focus. Which takes us back to those chanting teachers and the school in Mukilteo.
“I would take my peers down this pathway of reasoning. When kids would call me an ‘Oreo,’ I took offense to that. So I would ask them what they meant.“
From a very early age, Bervell was an exceptionally high-performing student, an academic GOAT who took ninth-grade math in the fifth grade and possessed natural leadership skills that helped him become student body treasurer and president. But underneath that middle-school glory lurked hidden hostilities. After being beaten by Bervell for the umpteenth time during a timed multiplication test, a fellow fifth-grade student lost his cool, blurting out: “Why are you so smart? You’re supposed to be Black!”
That kind of implicit bias—a blithe assumption that Black means inferior—has fueled Bervell’s lifelong drive to confront and investigate prejudice.
“I learned really early on to push back against the racial stereotypes by asking questions,” he says. “I would take my peers down this pathway of reasoning. When kids would call me an ‘Oreo,’ I took offense to that. So I would ask them what they meant. And they would say, ‘Well, you’re, like, student body president and you like to work hard, and you’re in all AP and Honors classes.’ I would continue to question—‘Are you saying that because I’m Black, I can’t do these things?’ And they’d go, ‘No, no, that’s not what I meant!’ And I’d say, ‘Well, then what did you mean?’ And then they’d have to concede, ‘Oh, I guess that kind of is what I said.’”
Bervell’s inclination to dig deeper and not settle for lazy answers to uncomfortable questions seems to be at the very core of his being. “I’m always examining why race is so intimately tied to the things that we do, our social fabric, and the expectations that we have.”
It’s hardly surprising that a top student gravitates toward a career in medicine. When Bervell was growing up, his Ghanaian parents would tell their children that they could be one of three things: doctor, lawyer, or engineer. The fact that he thought they were kidding (though he no longer does) tells you something about the family dynamics. Expectations were clearly high, but not to the point of being oppressive.
Hence it appears that going to med school (after receiving a bachelor’s degree in molecular cellular developmental biology at Yale, a master’s in medical science at Boston University and spending a year working as a clinical research assistant at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, Washington) was less about making his parents happy and more about continuing his quest for equity. “I always think about that phrase, ‘You can’t be what you can’t see,’” he says, “Only 5% of [U.S.] doctors are Black. If we’re going to diversify this field, we need visible role models.”
“The ways we talked about race in our classes made it seem as if health disparities in Black communities were biological.”
You also need someone to ask those pesky questions that disrupt the status quo. “In medicine we learn that race is a social construct, meaning you can’t look at someone’s genes and figure out what race they are,” he says.
“But at the same time, the ways we talked about race in our classes made it seem as if health disparities in Black communities were biological. We would be told that Black people are more likely to get asthma, more likely to get Covid, have higher rates of diabetes, chronic kidney disease, hypertension, all these things, yet we didn’t parse out the reasons why—how income, history, environment, and access to care have an impact.”
The first time Bervell raised his voice to question the exclusion of Black and Brown patient experiences was during a dermatology unit about cyanosis, a condition where a lack of oxygen in the blood causes body tissue to turn bluish-purple. “I remember I looked at my own skin and I’m like, my skin is not going to turn blue. So I raised my hand and said, ‘Professor, what would this look like on someone like me?’ He had a great answer. He explained that you can look at the mucous membranes, the eyes, and nail beds. But I left that class wondering, if I hadn’t asked that question, who would have?”
Bervell is used to being the “only.” He and a classmate were the first two Black students at Washington State’s College of Medicine (when the program was in its third year). This unique position, along with the realization that people of color have always been an afterthought in medicine, was actually a factor in choosing the school. “I knew that I had an opportunity to create something, to start something that could be new and actually leave a legacy,” he says. Which is exactly what he did.
He became the Medical Student Council president and the co-founder and president of a chapter of the Student National Medical Association, an organization dedicated to diversifying the field of medicine. He is also the founder and director of the Coug Health Academic Mentoring Program (CHAMP), an initiative that aims to increase the number of underrepresented students in medicine by offering support and coaching.
In 2020, the Covid crisis and the Black Lives Matter protests brought an even greater urgency to his work. “I was living with four other roommates, but I just felt so lonely because all of them were white and they didn’t understand how I was feeling,” he recalls.
This sense of isolation, coupled with the desire to use his platform to make a difference, was the impetus for his first viral TikTok video. It tackled the dangerously biased use of pulse oximeters, a small device that clamps onto a patient’s finger to measure blood oxygen saturation levels. It’s one of the most frequently used tools to diagnose the severity of Covid infections and its results often determine whether a patient is hospitalized or not. Bervell had learned that oximeters were prone to misdiagnosing Black patients, since the readings were only calibrated for white skin tones. The discovery was shocking.
“At this point I was a year and a half into medical school and I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t learned about this. I did more research and realized that it had been known for a long time. But no one was talking about it.” Bervell compressed his findings into a 30-second clip, posted it, and went to bed. When he woke up the next morning the video had received over half a million views. Reports of lives saved began to trickle in.
“I knew I wanted to do something that caused us to really think deeper about the world around us and question the attitudes we take for granted.”
Since then, there have been hundreds of videos and hundreds of millions of views, along with news articles, talk show appearances, White House summits, and committee appointments. Bervell is not only an extraordinarily gifted communicator, he also has the kind of warm and generous personality that lifts people up and makes them feel seen (as in what you wish for in a doctor, but don’t always get). He tells a recent anecdote from his current surgery residency at U.C.L.A. about a Black emergency patient who came in with an abscess and was immediately questioned about drug use.
“I could see her thinking, ‘You’re asking that because I’m Black,’” he recalls. “So I went back to her and we talked about it and she told me that whenever she was in a hospital setting the assumption was that she was a drug user. I told her that I was sorry and that I knew that the healthcare system doesn’t always work for people who look like us. I could tell that she felt relieved.”
His kindness and humanity also translate to the screen. As a guest on The Kelly Clarkson Show, he was introduced to the sister of a woman who had received a life-saving kidney transplant thanks to a Medical Mythbuster video. As the two melted into a long celebratory hug, the mutual affection was palpable. You didn’t even need to see them quietly exchange “I love you” to each other to feel it. Bervell is currently in talks with a media platform about a potential TV show, and if it materializes, there’s every reason to believe that he will be a star.
“I’ve always been someone who wanted to leave a positive legacy,” he says. “I knew I wanted to do something that caused us to really think deeper about the world around us and question the attitudes we take for granted. And when I started studying medicine I didn’t know how to channel that. But now I feel like I’ve found that voice.”
All images courtesy of Joell Bervell.
