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GW School of Medicine & Health Sciences
Center for Faculty Excellence
February 2025 Faculty Spotlight
Excellence in teaching & learning, scholarly endeavors, and leadership are all around us at GW Medicine. The Center for Faculty Excellence would like to spotlight our faculty’s contributions to our academic community and beyond! Each month, we will highlight a faculty or staff member. We want to thank our highlighted faculty and staff members for sharing their advice and perspectives with us!
- SMHS Center for Faculty Excellence
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Join the CFE as we highlight Dr. Lanre Falusi, she discusses her journey as a pediatric physician and her work within advocacy and healthy equity. Dr. Falusi discusses her research projects and how they contribute to the overall well-being of patients and their families, as well as the institution at large. She provides an update on her participation as a member of the Macy Faculty Scholars Program and the importance of celebrating the little wins in life.
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Biography
Olanrewaju (Lanre) Falusi, MD, MEd is a primary care pediatrician at Children’s National Hospital and an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences focused on the intersection of health equity, advocacy, and education. As Medical Director of Advocacy Education in the Child Health Advocacy Institute of Children’s National, Dr. Falusi develops community-based training for trainees and staff, leads faculty development initiatives in advocacy, and supports the development of policies to promote health equity. She is an Associate Program Director in the Pediatric Residency Program, directing the LAUnCH Track, which trains residents to become leaders in advocacy and community partnerships. As a Macy Faculty Scholar, she leads community-engaged medical education research initiatives.
She has led the creation, implementation, and evaluation of the TEACH (Trainee Education in Advocacy and Community Health) curriculum on addressing child poverty for pediatric residents, medical students, and nursing students. The TEACH curriculum, supported by a 5-year nearly $1 million federal grant, was co-created with community organizations to incorporate innovative ways to teach about SDH with interactive modules, simulations, and hands-on experiences. Dr. Falusi's contributions to the field of immigrant health are focused on utilizing research and clinical experience for legislative advocacy and cross-sector education. She has conducted mixed-methods community-based research on the effect of immigration policy on adolescent mental health, providing evidence of increased anxiety and depressive symptoms related to restrictive immigration policies and discrimination. She has held local and national leadership positions in the American Academy of Pediatrics, currently serving as a Spokesperson and a member of the Committee on Federal Government Affairs. She has spoken at conferences, in Congressional testimony, and in the media on topics including poverty, immigrant health, and antiracism, and she co-hosts a podcast on health and parenting.
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Interview Q/A
How long have you been at GW Medicine? What drew you to your current position?
Lanre: Well, I have been a part of the GW for most of my career, first as a resident at Children's National, which I completed in 2008 and was a chief resident. After residency, I worked at a federally qualified health center in Maryland for about seven years. I joined the Children’s and the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences faculty in 2016.
I have a few different roles, but the strands that connect the work I do are advocacy, education, and a vision of physicians as effective advocates, policy experts, and leaders in community health. What drew me to these roles goes back to my childhood. I was born in Nigeria, and my family came to the United States when I was a child. My parents were students, so we did not have a lot of money, and we moved around a bit so my father could finish his graduate program. Despite the challenges, I had great teachers and a safe environment that made me recognize and understand the support families need.
Going through medical school, I saw how deeply things like poverty and access to care impact families' well-being, concepts that we now call social determinants or social drivers of health. As a medical student and resident, we worked alongside families to help connect them to the types of resources and programs available to support them, such as WIC, SNAP, and Medicaid. Then, in my first job at the federally qualified health center, I worked with a large immigrant population from Central and South America. Oftentimes, these patients were fleeing violence and poverty, and I recognized that as a physician I could use my position to help amplify their voices. As a result, I got more involved in the American Academy of Pediatrics, doing work in policy writing, testifying at the DC City Council and Congress, and meeting with legislators to discuss the needs of patients and communities. We should be vocal in these areas as physicians and healthcare and education professionals. About 80% of what impacts a person's health is things like neighborhood safety, access to healthcare, access to food, education, and jobs, so it is critical that we teach our trainees how to advocate for (and with!) patients.
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Why did you decide to pursue a career in pediatrics?
Lanre: At a young age, I knew I wanted to be a pediatrician. I have a few aunts and uncles who are physicians but not pediatricians, so I am not quite sure what made me specifically interested in pediatrics, but going through medical school rotations made it very clear. It was the rotation where I felt the happiest, and it just felt naturally aligned with my interests. Kids are adorable and fun to be around, they are the only patient population you can tickle and make laugh!
Looking at the bigger picture, recognizing that a child has their whole lifetime ahead of them, the impact you could have on them is so profound. It is very rewarding to work with families and caregivers to help them feel more confident in their understanding of their child’s health and development and what resources they need to care for their children, knowing they are doing their very best.
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What are your major responsibilities here at GW?
Lanre: I have a few main roles here at Children’s National and GW. Clinically, I see patients at our health center in Columbia Heights, which has a very diverse and largely immigrant population. Working with immigrant populations for over 15 years has helped me to become proficient in Spanish, which is very beneficial because I can connect with my patients better. Our health center also offers wraparound services, including legal services, to support children and their families. At Children’s, we have a Child Health Advocacy Institute (CHAI), where I work with an amazing team to oversee the work around advocacy education, which includes everyone from students, residents, fellows, faculty, and staff to nurses and social workers. We also have a faculty development program called the CHAI Affiliate Faculty Program, where we provide monthly educational sessions on advocacy and offer support to attend advocacy-related conferences. We also develop networking opportunities for the group, which is composed of faculty who are physicians, nurse practitioners, psychologists, and dentists. In addition, there are several curricula we lead within the CHAI that are mainly for pediatric residents, but many opportunities are also open to other groups interested in supporting the community health improvement work for Children's National. Within our residency program, I'm currently the Associate Program Director for our Leadership in Advocacy, Under-resourced Communities and Health Equity (LAUnCH) Track, which is focused on training pediatric residents to become active leaders in advocacy, policy, and community health. This track is for those residents who want to make these areas a core part of their careers.
Regarding my work as an educator, I am one of the co-directors in the GW Clinical Public Health GME tracks. I oversee the Community Health and Advocacy track with Dr. Adrienne Poon, who is an internist at GW, and we focus on the skills needed to identify community needs, work collaboratively with diverse partners to address needs and elevate community assets, and communicate effectively to decision-makers and the public. Most of our learners are residents and fellows based on the Foggy Bottom campus, and some fellows at Children's National. This is my newest role, and I have really enjoyed working with the other dedicated and knowledgeable faculty to build this program! I am grateful to Dr. Lawrence Deyton for creating the vision for this program starting years ago, and now to the leadership of Dr. Jill Catalanotti and Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt.
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Lanre: The Macy Faculty Scholars Program is a national cohort program for medical education faculty, funded by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. I'm about 18 months into the 2-year program and am very sad for it to end, but I strongly encourage any faculty to look into the program. The program has provided me with time and funding, allowing me to work on medical education projects and further my professional development. With support from the program, I have completed courses through the Harvard Macy Institute and presented my work at conferences.
The current project I am working on through the program is related to community and patient engagement and how we assess our trainees, specifically by getting patient or parent feedback on how residents discuss social determinants/drivers of health with families. Usually, as part of our SDH curricula, we train residents on how to screen for and discuss SDH with families. We have residents do reflections and knowledge tests as part of our assessments. Yet, we've never gone directly to families to ask, how are these conversations with our residents going for you? Are you finding these discussions helpful? What can we do to better train our residents and, eventually, our faculty to discuss topics like food insecurity and transportation? Through this work, we want to ensure families leave their clinic visits feeling listened to and supported. We’re focusing on the assessment of residents because, within med ed, that is a critical area where we can address SDH. Clinical and administrative leaders have purview over screening protocols and hiring of support staff like social workers; my goal is that we can add to that by ensuring that residents have the communication tools and structural competency to work with families to address these needs. One of the best ways we can do that is to get feedback directly from patient families.
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What is your favorite part of teaching at GW Medicine?
Lanre: One of my favorite parts of teaching is how much I learn from my trainees. Some of the things I learn are to be expected, such as things I should be aware of related to what social media influencers are posting about parenting. As a “geriatric millennial” or younger Gen-Xer, I am not very active on Instagram, but I want to hear about what is popular because many of my patients and their parents are, so it's beneficial to understand the current trends.
The other things I enjoy are the energy and fresh ideas our trainees bring and their overall desire to learn. As an example, we do a 30-minute lecture for our pediatric residents at the start of each clinic session. Almost every time, one of the residents will then see a patient that day who had the same situation we discussed during lecture. They can immediately apply what they have learned or realize there was a piece they may not understand fully. It is so cool to see them genuinely apply their learning and enhance their understanding, and it motivates them to learn more since they know the importance of what we discuss and how they can better care for patients.
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Lanre: I am excited about some of the promises of new emerging technologies and Artificial intelligence (AI). There is potential for advances in technology and AI to help close gaps by using AI to predict who may benefit from specific resources and more support. For instance, if we have limited resources of social workers or governmental resources, how can we use AI to help us interpret data faster and more efficiently and increase outreach? Right now, people are working on these kinds of tools, and this work could be applied to children in a meaningful way. It is essential that this work does not perpetuate biases even further, so it is crucial to assess these new technologies carefully. So clinically, that's really exciting news for the future that has the potential to enhance care for patients.
In terms of advocacy, more and more trainees are seeing the benefit of advocacy and health equity training, and understanding how often some groups of patients or communities are not getting the same resources as others. They are seeing that how we communicate with patients is not a one size fits all method. I'm excited that our future workforce will be even more knowledgeable and motivated to incorporate these ideas not as just vague and nebulous concepts, but tools they can apply when they are with patients and families. My hope is that our trainees can identify disparities, recognize where they have privilege and power, and see patients and families as partners and experts in their own experience.
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Lanre: For this research project, I have had the pleasure of partnering with Dr. Maranda Ward, who is a real scholar when it comes to anti-racism, and it has been a great pleasure working with her. When we started around 2020 on the DISRUPT model, there were numerous trainings on how to be anti-racist when we talk to our patients or talk to our colleagues, or how we teach our trainees; however, we wanted to take it a step further and think about institutional anti-racism, and how a department or division can contribute to that. We first created a web-based module for people to complete, then did in-person applied trainings for the departments. The online modules give baseline knowledge, while our in-person training focused on cases relevant to the specific department or division we were teaching, as well as non-clinical cases when we trained non-clinical departments. We evaluated part one – the module training – based on participants’ self-reported motivations and attitudes. Part two of the evaluation focused similarly on self-reported attitudes and satisfaction. We are still providing training and evaluating that data as it comes in. The next steps include continuing to offer the online modules to anyone at GW and seeing how to incorporate some of this work and feedback we receive into institutional policies.
Right now, in the United States, our culture has shifted from where it was in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd and the recognition and reckoning of racism in the United States, where individuals, corporations, and government leaders spoke out about how racism impacts so much of our society. Now, we are seeing a backlash against DEI initiatives and these sorts of training. So, a role that this work has at an institutional level is to ensure that the policies that we've put in place, which have been so thoughtful and at the forefront of GW Medicine, don’t get rolled back and that we have data showing that people working at our institutions find this work helpful. I don't doubt that our institutions will remain focused on this, but it is helpful to have data to support what we are doing.
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What impact do you hope your research has on your profession and/or GW Medicine?
Lanre: I hope that the work Dr. Ward and I are working on adds pieces to the larger jigsaw puzzle that contributes to the overall impact of recognizing that so much of a person's health and well-being happens outside of what we do in our clinics and is critical. There is so much data behind why and how learning more about health equity and social determinants or drivers of health is important. As clinicians, this requires us to come out of our comfort zones and become more comfortable with asking patients and families about how they see things like their immigration status or racism impact their communities and health. It also requires us to take what we are learning and amplify those voices, advocating with our patients and communities and using our privilege to talk to institutional and government leaders about what patients and their families need. We are advocating because the data support the idea that people's health improves when we address these issues.
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February is Black History Month. What does the significance of this month mean to you, particularly as a healthcare provider whose research and advocacy are at the intersection of health and race?
Lanre: I see Black History Month as a time to recognize and celebrate Black history, which is American history, and celebrate the contributions of Black people and the promise as we look to the future of anti-racism in this country. Personally, as an African immigrant, it is a time to remind myself and talk to my kids about the sacrifices that African Americans have made for generations and that a lot of what we're able to enjoy is due to the sacrifices of those who came before us. We give gratitude to those who made those sacrifices.
Increasingly, it's also a time again for advocacy to make sure that we are teaching our trainees and ourselves as faculty about disparities and inequities, what we can do to close those gaps, and what progress has already been made by people who have that lived experience to be able to speak out for themselves.
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How does this spotlight/recognition make you feel?
Lanre: I love the work I do, so being able to share this with others is excellent! It’s also a great opportunity to highlight that I don’t do any of this alone, but rather with the great faculty and teams I work with at Children’s National, GW, and the Macy Faculty Scholars Program. I want to recognize those groups and give gratitude to them for all these projects and initiatives we work on – from the students and residents who are part of the Macy project, to the residents who I have the privilege of teaching, to the faculty and staff who help to keep me motivated.
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What is one thing that keeps you motivated during the day?
Lanre: I stay motivated by celebrating the small wins first. So much of the work we do is on significant topics, such as eliminating racism or addressing poverty, and unfortunately, those things are not going to happen in a day. However, there are the small things we can recognize, like being able to have a conversation with a leader that is the first step to enacting a change or submitting a grant or a paper that got accepted. Celebrating those smaller wins keeps me motivated while also helping me take on those more significant issues.
Another motivation is the connections I make with those around me. As an extrovert, I am a people person, and in most of my meetings, we start off by catching up with one another. It helps to remember that we are all just people, and we all come into these shared spaces with our own experiences and important things happening in our lives. We can foster and make personal connections with one another so that when things are hard, we remember that we are not alone. Again, we are just human; no one is a superhero, and every individual on the team is important - we are all just working toward a shared cause and goal. Having this outlook keeps me motivated every day and lets me have some fun in the workday, too!
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