Dr. Kwadwo Owusu-Akyaw

Black History Month 2023

Surgeon Kwadwo Owusu-Akyaw spends the majority of his days with athletes who require arthroscopic or minimally invasive surgeries on their knees, hips, and shoulders. While he helps people return to playing the sports they like, he is also active in the realm of diversity and inclusion as it relates to sports medicine.

“There is an intersection of orthopedics with racial disparity and inequality,” Owusu-Akyaw said. “It is something that is near and dear to me.”

He went on to say there are barriers and limitations that lead to the number of Black people in orthopedics, and there are also higher rates of misdiagnoses among that population. One example he shared is the misdiagnose of ACL tears in the knee, which do not show up on an X-ray. He said he has seen patients in the Black community who were misdiagnosed and ultimately suffered longer than needed.

His goal is to educate both sides.

“We need to educate the community so they know the signs or symptoms to take active roles in their care and advocate for themselves – to know the questions to ask and the next steps in diagnostics,” he said. “We also need to educate the medical community at large about the disparities that exist so providers are alerted that these things are happening.”

Owusu-Akyaw became interested in this field of medicine as he progressed through college and medical school at Duke University. He said seeing the effect that sports medicine has on communities had the biggest impact on him, in addition to literally putting people back together.

He serves on the board of the J. Robert Gladden Orthopaedic Society, an organization with the largest membership of Black orthopedic surgeons in the world. He’s also a quarterly columnist for Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, a peer-reviewed medical journal.

“The key to decreasing barriers is creating that exposure and easy access to information,” he said.