Superfund Research Program

“The goal of my research is to create data that can not only inform medical strategies, but also policies that can protect people’s health,” Nwanaji-Enwerem said.

From a very early age, Jamaji Nwanaji-Enwerem, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.P., a former NIEHS SRP-funded postdoctoral fellow, knew he wanted to pursue a career addressing health disparities in the U.S. and abroad. A Nigerian-American, Nwanaji-Enwerem recalls traveling back and forth between the two countries and observing how populations in both nations experience similar health disparities, such as lack of access to healthcare.

“Seeing how health disparities impact people’s lives and their ability to provide for their families sparked my interest in a career that merges both medicine and research,” said Nwanaji-Enwerem, who earned his degrees from Harvard University. “When I went off to medical school, I was resolute in doing research that was translational in nature, meaning that its findings can have more immediate and lasting contributions, so that fewer people have to experience illnesses related to environmental exposures in the places where they live and work.”

Nwanaji-Enwerem completed his postdoctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley under the guidance of Andres Cardenas, Ph.D. An expert in the field on environmental molecular epidemiology, Nwanaji-Enwerem is now an emergency medicine resident doctor at Emory University’s School of Medicine and an adjunct assistant professor at the School of Public Health.

Read more in his NIEHS Grantee Highlight.