Brooklyn doctor appointed as sole Black board member of NYACP
After more than 30 years of practice and research in New York, Dr. Moro O. Salifu, professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at SUNY Downstate, will be appointed as Governor-elect Designee of the American College of Physicians (ACP) for the Brooklyn/Queens and Staten Island chapter of the ACP. Salifu replaces Todd Simon and will be the only Black governor on the New York board.
Born in Bolgatanga, Ghana, Salifu knew early that he wanted to be a doctor, thanks to seeing the issues of not having enough doctors for patients. “I got to see firsthand how people in my hometown were struggling with small, little ailments, and there was just barely [any] help. There was one big hospital, but it was mostly understaffed,” Salifu said.
After graduating from the Lawra Secondary School in Ghana and later spending six years studying medicine at the Dokuz Eylul University in Turkey, Salifu came to New York in 1994 and became an internal medicine and nephrology specialist through a fellowship with SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn. While working in the U.S, he observed that the issue of not enough doctors was still evident.
“It’s the same thing across the world. I came to America thinking that America has all the doctors, but we still don’t have enough,” Salifu said.
He later became chief of nephrology and director of the Transplant Program in 2008.
Salifu has remained interested in health disparities in New York, and joined the ACP in 2000, eventually becoming a counselor for the organization in Brooklyn. He later served as director of the Brooklyn Health Disparities Center for 14 years, working to mitigate the conditions Black patients face, including hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, stroke, etc., before being named a Master of ACP in 2018. The center has been able to secure funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for development programs to train students from high school to graduate level. He also serves as chair of the chapter’s DEI taskforce.
Throughout his career, Salifu has remained close to the Brooklyn community, speaking about health inequities at churches and other community centers and providing resources.
A main area of focus Salifu will have on the ACP board will be increasing the number of primary care providers in lower-income communities across the region and increasing racial concordance, meaning more Black physicians and primary care providers in particular for Black patients. In the U.S., the number of Black healthcare providers is a low of around 5% both nationally and at the New York state level.
According to Salifu, much of this effort will require lobbying the government to increase Medicare’s cap on new doctors from internal medicine residency programs at a given hospital. He said he will heavily promote the initiative once he is on the board.
Pushing for higher compensation for primary care providers is the other initiative Salifu will drive. He said many medical school graduates choose to go into a specialization instead of primary care because of pay differences.
In response to current attacks on DEI, Salifu said potential cuts to funding of those programs would be a “big mistake.” However, he is hopeful that once the temperature cools down around the current anti-DEI rhetoric, he will be able to obtain funding from NIH for initiatives in closing the gap in health equity.
“The work that we are doing has to do with increasing the number of underrepresented minority folks into the health professions. That is healthy for the United States. Can you imagine not having enough Black doctors in the United States? What does it mean for the United States economy?” Salifu said.
“If you never had someone from your family who was a doctor, how would you want to be a doctor? Our programs are exposing these young kids to these professions, and then we actually get more and more of those kids actually expressing interest, which is a good thing for America. It’s not a disputable thing.”
Earlier this week, the Trump administration implemented a freeze on the Presidents’ Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program, which provides anti-HIV and AIDS medicine and funding for African countries, which could lead to potential significant harm and virus spread.
“This money is peanuts from the context of America to help a poor country treat a particular disease and be healthy. I think, from a humanistic perspective, this is so important to do,” Salifu said. “I hope that this is temporary and that it will come back, but if it doesn’t come back, this is terrible, and it’s going to affect a lot of lives and people are going to, in the future, see that they made a terrible mistake.”
In his career, Salifu has received various awards, including the 2022 Laureate Award for excellence in medical care, community service, education, and research through his work in the ACP chapter and at SUNY Downstate.
Salifu will begin his term as ACP governor-elect designee on April 5, 2025, before assuming his four-year term on April 16, 2026. He is proud that ACP recognized his work, and for now is looking forward to celebrating his new appointment with his wife of 39 years and three sons.
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