Dr. Anisa Ibrahim was 5 years old when her life was uprooted by the grisly consequences of a gruesome civil war. Fleeing Somalia in 1992 with her family, Ibrahim sacrificed a year of her childhood in refugee camps in Kenya. “There were so many people in small quarters, all of us were fleeing the downstream effects of violence and political unrest,” Ibrahim, 32, told CNN. “Our family was luckier, but there was a lot of poverty, malnutrition, and infectious diseases and outbreaks.” The following year, Ibrahim’s family was relocated to the United States, where she and her siblings — including a younger sister who’d recently contracted measles — were treated at Harborview Medical Center’s Pediatrics Clinic in Seattle. It’s the same center that Ibrahim — more than two decades later — now runs, at a time when the nation’s refugee resettlement efforts have eroded under White House pressure. Still, she looks upon refugee children who come to the facility with the same hope she once felt as a young patient. “I’m not this exceptional human being,” Ibrahim said. “There are millions of refugees right now who are not being given the opportunities that I have been given. And if they were, they would do incredible things.” Ibrahim had always known she wanted to be a doctor. And her time at the clinic made her realize that her dreams were more than just fantasies. The treatment she received as a refugee, she said, “solidified” her decision.
“My pediatrician at Harborview was one of the first people who believed in me and that I could become a doctor,” Ibrahim said. “For me, as a young refugee, saying, ‘This is my dream,’ and having someone already doing it actually believing in you is so meaningful.” That pediatrician was Dr. Elinor Graham, associate professor emeritus of pediatrics at the University of Washington. “In the clinic, I would always ask children what they want to be when they grow up, what were their dreams? I remember Anisa at around age 10 saying that she wanted to become a pediatrician like me,” Graham told CNN. After graduating from the University of Washington’s medical school, Ibrahim joined Harborview as a general pediatrician in 2016. In September, she was promoted to medical director. “I felt that having Dr. Anisa Ibrahim become the medical director of the same clinic where I was her pediatrician, and in the same role that I had, was the highlight of my medical career,” Graham said, calling her successor the perfect leader for a clinic that primarily serves lower-income, immigrant, refugee and minority populations. But Ibrahim’s move to America did not come without obstacles. As a Somali refugee who wore hijab, the Islamic headscarf, Ibrahim saw no one who looked like her in her field. That often made her doubt she even would be accepted into medical programs.
