Dartmouth doctor named Dalhousie’s head of Black Health

Dalhousie University’s academic director of Black Health, Dr. Leah Jones, is hoping to open up more opportunities within medicine to African Nova Scotian students

CITYnews halifax \ Steve Gow

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Dalhousie University Medical School has named its first-ever academic director of Black Health.

Dartmouth’s Dr. Leah Jones is the school’s first appointee to take on the new role, a job that will involve and oversee the direction for the Faculty of Medicine to engage African Nova Scotian and Black populations in Atlantic Canada.

The appointment comes more than a year and a half after Dr. Brent Young was named Dalhousie’s academic director of Indigenous Health in the Faculty of Medicine, showing the university’s goal to increase representation of diverse communities into Dalhousie’s Medical School and as such, the healthcare system in Nova Scotia.

“That role paved the way for this role,” says Dr. Jones about the Indigenous Health academic director appointment. She adds other initiatives by Dalhousie acted as precursors to the creation of the development of Black Health at the university’s Medical School.

Among those programs is PLANS, an initiative from Dalhousie that offers programming like camps, mentorships and resources to Black youth in order to increase representation and interest in health professions through recruitment and retention.

“They have been in existence for ten years,” says Dr. Jones, adding she worked with the program during her time in medical school training. As academic director, she now co-leads PLANS.

“They helped me get to where I am today and so there’s been lots of advocacy from community Black leadership within medicine that brought this role to existence, so I’m really grateful for all the hard work behind the scenes.”

In the role of academic director of Black Health, Dr. Jones hopes to expand the opportunities within medicine to more African Nova Scotian and Black students by creating and supporting a welcoming and inviting environment to learn and work.

“I never met a family physician or physicians growing up — even in Dartmouth,” says Dr. Jones about the importance of bringing visibility to the Faculty of Medicine. “So, (growing up), it was often hard for me to picture myself in the position I am in today. A lot has changed for the better.”

Although she is a native of Dartmouth, Dr. Jones also has ties to more rural regions of Nova Scotia. Both of her parents are from Cape Breton and her father grew up in Whitney Pier — a historic Black community built near a former steel plant at Sydney Harbour more than 100 years ago.

She says that experience and those roots have given her a unique perspective on the challenges that face African Nova Scotian communities with regard to seeing medicine as a viable career option.

“I do understand the challenges of rural communities (and) the lack of representation of Black healthcare providers in general is widespread but even more pronounced in these rural places,” continues Dr. Jones. “So I definitely see the importance of the reach — that we have to be visible for them as well.”

Dr. Jones certainly never let that lack of visibility set her back. From a young age, she says she knew she wanted to be a physician.  As a result, she enrolled in Dalhousie herself to obtain a Bachelor of Science in Biology.

From there, she was accepted into Dalhousie Medical School and went on to complete her family medicine residency training at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Following her residency, Dr. Jones relocated to Ottawa for two years where she worked as an independent family physician with a focus in addictions medicine in the nation’s capital.

However, when the opportunity popped up to return to Dalhousie and become the university’s academic director of Black Health, Dr. Jones says she simply could not resist.

“I have so many family and friends here that the draw has always been there,” she says. “I always just wanted to get some experience in a different place and kind of bring back new perspectives — I think that’s very valuable as well — but there’s something about working for the community that’s lifted me up into this position (so) it’s definitely coming full circle.”