Jennifer Adaeze Okwerekwu

Columnist, Off the Charts

Jennifer Adaeze Okwerekwu is a second-year resident in psychiatry and a columnist for STAT. She received her MD from the University of Virginia in the spring of 2016. Jennifer is passionate about exploring the intersection between medicine and media. She worked as a medical student producer for "The Dr. Oz Show" and as an intern for CNN's medical unit, Radio Disney, and the Kaiser Family Foundation Health Reporting Program. Jennifer graduated from Harvard University in 2010 where she majored in visual and environmental studies (film studies) and minored in health policy. In 2011, she received a Master of Science in narrative medicine from Columbia University.

Off the Charts

Jennifer Adaeze Okwerekwu

Columnist, Off the Charts

Why are we less forgiving of Ralph Northam as a politician than as a doctor?

Dear Atul Gawande: As you go on your listening tour, don’t forget about mental health

Watch: The patient was saying sexist things. How I handled him made me part of the problem

My ‘sunken place’: Having to call police when I know it could be deadly for my black patients

‘Don’t trust your patients’: What Larry Nassar’s boss gets very, very wrong

People with mental illness can make psychiatric advance directives. We need to encourage them to do so

Here are my New Year’s resolutions. Some of them apply to medicine as well

#MeToo: So many of my patients have a story. And absorbing them is taking its toll

Match matters: Here’s some advice on how to interview for your residency

An elderly doctor was struggling. I spoke up. Then came the ‘snitch guilt’

How a kidney stone taught me that medicine has changed me

My medical school lesson was tinged with racism. Did that affect how I treated a sickle cell patient years later?

Two little girls, two similar paths to medicine, but one difference: immigration

I went to medical school in Charlottesville. I know white anger well

Prescribing opioids: Balancing pain relief and addiction prevention haunted my early days in medicine

A text message helped one of my patients stay in control of his health. Here’s how

When my patient died, I imagined what his life had been. Then I learned the truth

Working at the ‘top of my license’ means I sometimes have to say no

Jennifer Adaeze Okwerekwu

Columnist, Off the Charts

Sign up for our Daily Recap newsletter