As a Yale student-athlete, Yetsa Tuakli-Wosornu excelled. After graduating (Timothy Dwight, 2001), she continued training and eventually became a finalist for the 2016 Ghanaian Olympic team in the women’s long jump.
But at international sports festivals, it was her Paralympic teammates—not her Olympic counterparts— that caught her attention. She marveled at the tenacity of wheelchair racers like Maclean Dzidzienyo (pictured here), one of Ghana’s most decorated Para athletes.
Now an assistant clinical professor at the Yale School of Public Health, Tuakli-Wosornu, M.D., M.P.H., uses sports to reduce stigma for people with disabilities in resource-limited settings. With her team at the Yale Para and Adapted Sports Lab, she organized Africa’s first continental Paralympic exchange and developed a sustainable and affordable bamboo wheelchair for people with disabilities in Ghana. Dzidzienyo used this wheelchair during the 2018 International Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine World Congress in Paris, where he spoke about how he overcame cultural stigma and personal tragedy to become an elite athlete.
Tuakli-Wosornu can attest to the fact that sports helped her find her voice in the world, and she can see its transformative power helping others, including Dzidzienyo.
“Not every disability is visible,” she said. “Things like a mental health disorder or chronic pain can make getting
out of bed just as difficult as an amputation can. Either way, you have to mentally overcome so much.”