Joel Bervell’s TikTok videos start out much like any other 20-something content creator.
In a recent video, he looks directly into the camera with a serious expression in front of a black background with music floating along in the background. What sets Bervell apart from other TikTokers is what comes next: “Today, the World Health Organization announced that monkeypox is an international public health emergency.”
Bervell then goes on to describe what symptoms to monitor for, especially highlighting what to look out for in darker skin tones. Within three days, the video garnered 3 million views.
Bervell is a medical student at Washington State University — the school’s first black medical student. The lack of diversity mirrors the wider medical industry: only 5% of all US doctors identify as black or African American. This number has changed little in the last 120 years.
Bervell and many of his colleagues worry that this lack of representation in the medical community could spill over into practice, leading to drastically worse outcomes for patients of color. His fear has been confirmed in numerous investigations by the best medical journals in the world. Studies point to the problem but rarely provide a solution.
And that’s where Bervell’s content comes in. With his iPhone, LED ring lights, and simple editing skills and knowledge, he has made it his mission to educate black Americans about their health, and he hopes he can help solve the issue of health disparity. that afflicts the community. Bervell started filming the videos two years ago.
“I remember reflecting on things like the killing of Ahmaud Arbery,” says Bervell. “He was the same age as me. And then, of course, there were the George Floyd protests, which I attended myself. And those things made me want to use my voice.”
So Bervell decided to use his voice and his unique position as a black medical student to highlight race-based health disparity. His first video was about pulse oximeters and how they could give wrong readings for people with darker skin. The video was a hit, garnering more than 500,000 views.
Bervell found an audience desperate to learn how to take care of themselves, filling in the gaps medicine had left open for centuries. According to a recent poll, one in 10 Americans do social media for health information.
Non-white patients in the US routinely suffer from unequal medical treatment, from persistent problems with pulse oximeters to high mortality rates among black pregnant women.
Since posting his first video, attention on Bervell’s accounts has skyrocketed. His videos regularly receive hundreds of thousands of views, sometimes millions. The content he produces is apparently saving lives: WHYY reported earlier this year that a woman discovered she had a precancerous lesion on her leg and had it exorcised after watching one of Bervell’s videos.
She turned to Bervell to thank him, something that has become common for the young medical student. The comments section under his videos is filled with praise for the work he does and thanks for warning people about what to look out for in their bodies. Many also share personal stories of how they or a family member missed the warning signs because they weren’t educated on what to look for.
“Sometimes I’ve even been stopped on the street by people telling me that my videos have changed the way they think about themselves or interact with the health care system,” says Bervell. “And really, it just stopped me in my tracks and it’s humbling.”
Bervell has even caught the attention of the nation’s top doctor — US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy — with whom Bervell shot a TikTok video highlighting the burnout of health care workers during the pandemic.
“I truly never imagined that I would start out posting on TikTok and one day be sharing health information with the Surgeon General of the United States while dancing to a song from Disney’s ‘Encanto,'” says Bervell. “But Dr. Murthy has some really, really great dance moves.”
Bervell hopes to continue uploading content for the foreseeable future and attract more people to his videos to listen to his tips and advice. However, sharing videos on social media is just a side project – he still needs to complete his medical education and hopes to go into orthopedics.
“Orthopedic surgery is one of the fields that actually has the least diversity overall,” he says.
It’s another area of racial disparity in health care that Bervell aims to highlight and change in the future. Judging by his influence on TikTok so far, the sky’s the limit for Bervell’s work to fight disparity in medicine.
Resources to learn more about racial health disparity:
