Naana Afua Jumah

Naana Afua Jumah is a resident in obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Toronto. She graduated from Harvard Medical School, cum laude, in 2008. Naana holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Toronto and a D. Phil in Medical Engineering from the University of Oxford, which she completed as a Rhodes Scholar.

Naana has a longstanding interest in international and Aboriginal Peoples health that began when she was a member of the Regional Multicultural Youth Council in Northwestern Ontario. This is an organization that develops numerous healthy lifestyle programs for aboriginal and immigrant/refugee youth in the region and served as a springboard for interests that have continued through graduate school and medical school.

At Oxford, Naana’s doctoral research focused on vaccine delivery systems in resource-poor settings. During medical school, Naana studied the cultural perceptions of body shape and size with respect to chronic disease among a population of urban Ghanaian women living in the capital, Accra. She also investigated vaccine development for diarrhoeal diseases at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh.

Naana has sat on numerous boards and committees. She is currently a resident representative on the International Women’s Health Committee for the SOGC. From 2004 to 2010, Naana was an advisory board member of the Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes at CIHR. She has also served as a Governor on the University of Toronto Governing Council and as a member of the Lakehead District Roman Catholic Separate School Board’s Anti-Racism and Ethnocultural Equity Advisory Committee.