An Indian's journey from Nigerian village to Harvard

Monday, 23 December 2002, 20:30 IST
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WASHINGTON: It's been a long journey from a tiny village in Nigeria to the Harvard School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts, but Kaumudi Joshipura says her dream was big enough to enable her to make it. Joshipura, who is now the associate professor and co-director of the Oral Epidemiology Programme at Harvard, was born in Mumbai but grew up and went to school in Tanzania and Nigeria before coming to the U.S. in 1988. Joshipura said her father, who is a medical doctor, taught anatomy at different universities outside India and that is how she went to school in Africa. She graduated in dental surgery from the Nair Hospital Dental College, Mumbai. "At that time, the Nair Hospital Dental College used to provide free or highly subsidised treatment to all the patients who walked in, including the provision of dentures and orthodontic treatment. I have not heard of anything similar in any Dental School in the U.S.," Joshipura said. Asked about research facilities in India and whether they were comparable to those in the U.S., she said: "The current policy has not focused on funding research in my area and facilities are scarce in India compared to the U.S. "However, a lot of great research is ongoing in institutions such as AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) and TIFR (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research) and scientists at these places have made tremendous contributions." She said she came to the U.S. because "my husband, Jinraj Joshipura, motivated me to apply to Harvard. At that time we were in a small village called Urualla in Imo state in Nigeria, and studying at Harvard seemed a wild dream." But, then, she had an "American dream" and she pursued it with determination. Now that her goal of coming to Harvard has been fulfilled, what is Joshipura going to do ultimately? She answered: "To make a meaningful contribution to the improvement of human health, especially of the less privileged." Her work at the Harvard School of Public health focuses on dental disease, cardiovascular disease, nutrition and pregnancy outcomes. Joshipura's research into these diseases started getting public and press attention when her first independent work relating to tooth loss and periodontal disease and nutrition and coronary heart disease was published in 1996. This new study report appeared in the Journal of the American Heart Association, which said that men who had fewer than 25 teeth when they entered the study had a 57 percent higher risk of ischemic stroke than those with 25 or more teeth. The link between ischemic stroke and periodontal disease, which is caused by bacterial infections, adds another piece to the growing body of evidence that infection plays a role in stroke and heart disease, she said. Another unexpected - and unexplained - finding was that the association between tooth loss and stroke risk was higher among non-smokers than among smokers. Smoking tobacco is a risk factor for ischemic stroke and periodontal disease. "We don't know why non-smokers showed a higher association," Joshipura said. "But that lends support to the argument that the association between tooth loss and stroke is not all due to smoking." Before joining Harvard, Kaumudi worked as a research investigator at the Forsyth Institute. At Harvard, she said, "my main field of work is epidemiology - which is the study of the distribution and determinants of disease". Asked about her inspiration to pursue her chosen field, she mentioned Chester Douglass and Walter Willett as her mentors at Harvard University. Joshipura added: "My main source of inspiration is knowing that I am in a position to make a difference, and that I should make the best use of it." Above all, Joshipura attributes her greatest motivation to her husband, Jinraj Joshipura, whom she described as a "very supportive husband, who has been a source of great inspiration. He is proud of my career, and helps me prioritise my work even at a cost of neglecting some of my household chores". For her achievements, Joshipura has been given various awards, including the Dentist Scientist Award, National Institute of Dental Research, and the James M. Dunning Award for excellence in health care delivery and research.
Source: IANS
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