Hana Ali, MD, and Olusola Justin Ayankola, MD, second-year residents in the Yale Department of Psychiatry, have taken over leadership of the Yale Solomon Carter Fuller Association (YSCFA), a psychiatry department resident interest group.
YSCFA supports residents of African-American or African descent to formally help with recruitment of black residents and to increase community outreach and education initiatives in the New Haven area.
The goals of the group are to foster mentorship of these residents, cultural literacy of all members of the department, increase recruitment of medical students of African-American or African descent into psychiatry and the department, and to raise community awareness about mental illness.
Members have discussed several topics in the past academic year, including being black in academia, the business of medicine, being black at Yale, global psychiatry, and supporting residents during training.
Ali received her medical degree from Columbia University in 2017. Ayankola is a 2017 graduate of Harvard Medical School.