Michael Najem, Timothy Dwight '20

The Parallel Lives of Michael Najem and DJ Khaled

By Lena Chan

The person who coined the phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover” must have done so with Michael Najem in mind.

I met Michael at the beginning of my first year at Yale in the Timothy Dwight (TD) courtyard. Still indignant about my random assignment to a residential college whose first-years did not live on Old Campus, I was skeptical when meeting my TD “Big Sibs.” But what I lacked in residential pride Michael made up for tenfold in his enthusiasm for friends and mentors in TD. He seemed like the kind of guy who always got things right, who never strayed from his beliefs, who made comrades quickly and easily. I, on the other hand, could barely find the laundry room without getting lost and still struggled to finalize my class schedule—let alone my major and larger career interests. His confidence intimidated me. I quickly concluded that we probably shared nothing in common.

I was wrong. Michael’s journey has twisted and turned in ways similar to my own. Like me, Michael grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood as the child of immigrant parents. His family forged a new life in Methuen, Massachusetts in the 1970s after fleeing the Lebanese Civil War. As one of very few Middle Eastern students in his Catholic school, he was bullied almost every day for his differences. On the day of Osama Bin Laden’s death almost ten years ago, he recalls entering the playground to a circle of peers applauding and taunting, “Sorry for the loss of your father.” 

Michael remembers that while his first instinct was to retaliate physically, he merely clenched his fists. He realized instead that “the years of bullying had nothing to do with me.” Rather, they were products of deep-rooted misinformation and ignorance propagated both at home and in the community. After all, his bullies were “just young kids—how would they know any better?” 

The following year, awarded a full scholarship to attend Phillips Academy Andover, Michael entered a new community where “being different was cool.” The boarding school harbored students from across the globe, and for the first time, Michael had the opportunity to form bonds with others from Middle Eastern backgrounds. Over the next four years, he explored interests in swimming, soccer, and eventually community service, where he found his passion for “using the platform of my education to improve the lives of others, especially those who did not have the same opportunities or privileges that I did.”

Michael carried Andover’s motto “Non Sibi,” which translates to “not for self,” to Yale. A few weeks into his first year, before even solidifying his schedule, Michael volunteered as an Arabic English translator for the Haven Free Clinic. He would wake up at seven each Saturday morning to translate for physicians and a community of underserved, oftentimes undocumented immigrants who struggled to communicate their ailments and comprehend foreign medical practices. He worked closely with a woman from Syria who, like his own parents, had immigrated to the United States to flee war. They discussed not only her medical concerns but also her children, her journey to the United States, and his family’s parallel story. She later thanked Michael for making her feel at home.

Michael eventually joined the Haven Free Clinic board as the Director of Education and one of its few undergraduate representatives. His conversations with physicians and students in law, medicine, and public policy opened his eyes to issues of health inequities based on immigrant status and race. He began to think critically about the “long and dark history of experimentation and medical procedures conducted without the consent of people of color, often with the intent to hurt these communities.” 

To address the socioeconomic and cultural disparities he observed at the Haven Free Clinic, Michael turned to education. Through the non-profit organization Matriculate, he supported low-income students to attain higher education by assisting their college and financial aid applications. His sophomore summer, Michael worked as a Community Impact Measurement intern at Greenwich United Way, where he developed early childhood academic and social services programs and learned that “education is one of the better equalizers in our society.” Although his work at Greenwich United Way had nothing to do with medicine directly, it had everything to do with his philosophy as an aspiring doctor; he learned that “being a physician is more than just medicine. It’s about connecting with people and understanding how communities work.”

The following summer, Michael found an opportunity at Yale New Haven Hospital’s Orthopedic and Trauma Care Departments to address healthcare inequality. Under the guidance of Drs. Daniel Wiznia, Kevin Schuster, and Howard Forman—a group whose talents range from mechanical engineering to health economics—he researched insurance-based disparities in healthcare accessibility and quality in urgent care centers. These care centers are private, often profit-driven medical practices that strive to offer less expensive and quicker treatment than emergency rooms. Michael believes that urgent care centers “can serve a great purpose...but this research calls into question whether they are getting healthcare to people who need it most.” 

The project employed the secret shopper technique, which Michael describes as a “glorified prank call.” His research group contacted urgent care centers across the country, posing as a hypothetical patient with either Medicaid—a public service only granted to individuals below up to 133% of the federal poverty line—or private health insurance. They discovered that urgent care centers were significantly more likely to treat private insurance holders than Medicaid holders. Furthermore, when these centers did accept Medicaid, they often imposed further obstacles, limiting care by zip code or restricting patients to one appointment. 

To examine the quality of care at these centers, Michael’s team then acted as patients previously diagnosed with an inguinal hernia and reporting symptoms of belly pain. The group knew beforehand that healthcare workers should advise patients to immediately visit an emergency room because urgent care centers are often not equipped for these conditions. However, urgent care centers were significantly more likely to instruct private insurance holders to seek their services and Medicaid holders to find emergency treatment. Michael describes the situation as “ironic” because this tendency to prioritize private insurance disadvantaged these patients by instructing them to follow improper medical advice.

Michael’s research suggests that urgent care centers seek private insurance holders to maximize profits. He explains that “while we like to think of the healthcare system in an ideal world as patient-centric, in reality, it’s insurance-centric.” To Michael, these findings demonstrate that “at the end of the day, if people don’t take responsibility for the inequalities that patients face inside and outside the walls of the hospital, medicine isn’t serving its purpose.”

These experiences have reaffirmed Michael’s intention to approach healthcare equality at the forefront of his medical practice. He is one of 48 students enrolling in Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine’s inaugural class; the medical school was founded just this year by Kaiser Permanente, an integrated healthcare system devoted to meeting the enormous societal need for affordable care. Consistent with its commitment to eliminating financial barriers, the school will waive all tuition and fees for its first five classes. Awarded a full scholarship for his attendance, Michael will soon move to Pasadena, California to join a unique community that values health equity and service as greatly as he does. Afterward, he hopes to earn a Masters in Health Administration and advocate for the medical and socioeconomic needs of underserved communities. 

Over the past few months, the COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated the healthcare inequalities uncovered by Michael’s research. Although he is disheartened by the inability of many political leaders and healthcare administrators to promptly enact social distancing guidelines or provide hospitals with personal protective equipment, he finds hope in physicians like Dr. Anthony Fauci, who “focuses on protecting human life no matter how much backlash he gets from politicians.” 

“I would like to think that things would be different if a physician was in a leadership position,” Michael reflects.

As he graduates from Yale to attend medical school, many of Michael’s friends and mentors tease that he will soon become “the next Dr. Fauci.” While I don’t disagree with this comparison, I also know that it doesn’t fully capture Michael’s loyalty, enthusiasm, and uncanny ability to surprise others. Instead, I would liken him to some combination of Dr. Fauci and a better mannered DJ Khaled. After all, Michael has long admired the hip-hop artist, often quoting his lyrics about perseverance and hard work in everyday conversation. 

When I suggest this comparison during our interview, Michael laughs. “In a different lifetime, I would be an EDM DJ,” he admits, smiling and explaining that DJ Khaled is a “beaming ray of positivity to me.” The music artist also comes from a family of Middle Eastern immigrants. Like Michael, DJ Khaled worked endlessly to pursue his passion for music, recording from his garage and selling his CDs on the sidewalk. Like Michael, he probably faced countless negative characterizations of Middle Easterners and learned to overcome them on his own terms. 

The pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement demonstrate how medical inequality often overlaps with socioeconomic and educational disadvantage, criminalization, and other systems that oppress Black Americans. Michael acknowledges that while his upbringing has given him perspective on the plight of Middle Eastern immigrants, “I will never know an experience that is not my own. Period.” However, he also understands the danger of “looking at your particular group’s obstacles and thinking, ‘That absolves me from being an active force against racism.’” Michael believes that it is the duty of “what you may consider ‘traditionally successful immigrant groups’” to openly criticize the model minority myth and practice anti-racist strategies with their families. I have no doubt that Michael will continue to cherish his Middle Eastern background as a reminder of his devotion to the wellbeing of all communities, regardless of immigrant status, race, or ability to pay.