Dr. Omolara Uwemedimo

Dr. Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo is a Nigerian- American social justice pediatrician, advocate, professor & researcher with a passion for health equity for children, especially children in immigrant and ethnic minority families.

Over the past 15 years, she has worked as a practicing pediatrician in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Caribbean and continues to work in New York as an outpatient pediatrician for ethnically-diverse children. As co-director of Community Health and Social Medicine Initiatives, she creates innovative social medicine programs to reduce disparities among vulnerable children and families.

She is a staunch advocate for child health equity and serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Immigrant Health Special Interest Group, AAP Immigration Steering Committee and has been an invited speaker by advocacy groups including NY Immigration Coalition, Center for Law and Social Policy, Idaho Voices for Children and has been featured in NPR and Reuters.

She is the founding director of GLOhBAL (Global Learning. Optimizing health. Building Alliances Locally) at Cohen Children’s Medical Center of NY. Since 2013, the program has provided inter-professional clinical and research training in global and immigrant health for over 120 medical and public health trainees; serving over 3000 children.

She is also the creator of SHAPE, “Social Health Alliance to Promote Equity”,a clinic-based program that to-date has provided screening to over 2000 families for unmet social needs and social service referral and navigation support. She also has eceived funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to expand SHAPE and partner with community based organizations to targeting housing insecurity.

She is the pediatric director of the Hofstra-Northwell Medical Legal Partnership, a program which co-locates lawyers in clinical practices to provide pro-bono poverty and housing legal services.

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