As a medical student, Joel Bervell, MD, became an internationally known social media influencer and medical myth-buster with more than 1 million followers on his social media accounts.
As a recent medical school graduate, he is expanding his online presence with the semi-animated children’s YouTube series “The Doctor is In.”
He hopes the program will inspire Black children to become doctors because, as the show’s Kickstarter page said, “If you can see it, you can be it.”
“It's all about inspiring the next generation of underrepresented kids in medicine,” Dr. Bervell explained in a recent episode of “AMA Update.”
Animation’s superpower: Inspiration
He added that the show aligns with his work using the @JoelBervell handle on social media in which he talks about health and translating medical issues for a lay audience.
The potential is huge as streaming services account for 43.3% of all television viewing, compared to 22.4% from broadcasting through the airwaves. More than 11% of that content is seen via YouTube, making it the nation’s largest supplier of streaming content, according to the Nielsen Company.
Growing up as a Ghanaian American in a small town north of Seattle, Dr. Bervell—an AMA member—said he identified with the lead character in the cartoon series “Static Shock,” which was about a Black superhero teen who went to school by day and fought crime and saved the world by night.
“I’m definitely not a superhero, but I honestly saw myself a lot in his story and I was inspired to want to do more, be more, because of the animation that I saw,” Dr. Bervell said.
“So I always told myself that I wanted to start some type of animated show for the next generation,” he added. “Animation has a special way of allowing it to touch people in ways that lets them see themselves in another character.”
Dr. Bervell plays himself and is not animated, but the other characters are.
The characters include:
- Leland, a 5-year-old boy and patient with asthma who is always asking his pediatrician (Dr. Bervell) questions.
- Otto, Dr. Bervell’s “grumpy, but loveable” doctor’s bag who helps the audience better understand the medical lessons being conveyed.
- Sammie, Leland’s energetic and extroverted stethoscope.
- Zada, an x-ray machine full of data and medical knowledge.
The series was supported by a Kickstarter campaign that raised $60,000. YouTube contributed another $50,000 to help finance a full season of 10 three- to five-minute episodes.
“It's going to be a fun show that's really about getting kids inspired, getting them interested, and really creating and inspiring the next generation of health care professionals,” Dr. Bervell said.
AMA policy supports increasing the diversity of the physician workforce in the categories of race, ethnicity, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic origin and rurality. It also encourages physicians to engage in their communities to guide, support and mentor high school and undergraduate students with a calling to medicine.
Learn about the AMA Center for Health Equity and the AMA’s 2024—2025 strategic plan to advance health equity.
Pulse oximetry bias video takes off
In a recent Instagram post, Dr. Bervell noted that it was on Dec. 18, 2019, that he created his first TikTok video and, almost exactly five years later, Dec. 14, 2024, he graduated medical school.
His December 2020 video discussing how racial bias was exacerbated by pulse-oximetry measurement garnered widespread attention as he noted the significance this could have in diagnosing and monitoring COVID-19.
“I remember reading that study and thinking: I never saw this in my medical school classes. Why is that?” Bervell, said in a February 2023 “AMA Update” episode. The pulse-oximetry video was seen by 500,000 viewers in 24 hours and its comments section was filled with responses from doctors, nurses and physician assistants who wrote that they had never heard about this issue, and that it would change their practice.
The video helped cement his reputation as a medical myth-buster. He then posted content on health inequities and overlooked aspects of Black history in medicine to a growing audience.
“I’ve continued to really talk about race-based medicine and the way that we have these medical algorithms in health care that continue to use race in ways that maybe sometimes don't make sense,” Dr. Bervell said.
AMA Immediate Past President Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH, also detailed the history of pulse oximeters, their shortcomings and AMA advocacy to address health inequities in a 2022 Leadership Viewpoints column.
Dr. Bervell is encouraged that some positive change is occurring. The Food and Drug Administration released draft guidance in January on the use of pulse oximeters which highlights how skin pigmentation can affect their readings.
Dr. Bervell also mentioned that race is GFR equation used to evaluate kidney function, which has resulted in Black patients getting quicker access to treatment and transplantation.
Stay updated on the fight for greater health equity.
The AMA adopted policy in 2020 recognizing that “race is a social construct and is distinct from ethnicity, genetic ancestry, or biology.”
The policy also supports “ending the practice of using race as a proxy for biology or genetics in medical education, research, and clinical practice.”
“I also have been trying to really amplify the stories of individuals who've talked about their own experiences at the doctor, so that physicians who follow me, or even medical students, understand the fear that some patients may have when going to the doctor,” he said.
This work has helped Dr. Bervell garner many accolades, including being recognized as a “cycle breaker” by the Smithsonian Channel, which led to him receiving a congratulatory video from none other than Oprah Winfrey.
“You’re sparking the change that we all wish to see in this world,” Winfrey said in the video.
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