Growing up in Uganda, Juma Orach was inspired by his mother’s work as nurse and midwife at a local hospital. “I often saw people come to our home to speak with my mom and get advice. She was always generous with her knowledge. Seeing that and the impact she had made me want to become a doctor, so I could help our community too.”
But his plans took a different turn when he was accepted into the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at UBC for his undergraduate studies. The initiative selects academically talented yet economically disadvantaged young people from Sub-Saharan Africa to attend UBC. While medical school was out of the question because of his status as a temporary resident, Juma saw the scholarship as an opportunity to amplify his impact beyond Uganda.
“I thought a lot about giving up my dream of being a doctor. I told myself that while being a doctor, you get to help your immediate community; with research, I had the unique opportunity to more than that, to have an impact on the lives of people that I might never meet.”
Today, Juma is a PhD student in Experimental Medicine researching the health effects of air pollution, with a focus on diesel exhaust. His work could be crucial in informing both provincial and national policy and decision-makers as they work towards reasonable limits to occupational diesel exhaust exposure and devise practical bio-monitoring programs.
He conducts his research out of the Air Pollution Exposure Lab, at UBC, under the supervision of Dr. Chris Carlsten. Together with a team, he is working towards a more standardized way of measuring air pollution in the environment and its impact on the human body. He hopes to identify protein markers in blood and metabolites in urine which could then be validated as a specific biosignature of diesel exhaust exposure.
Outside of his doctoral work, Juma loves to write. Inspired by the protests against anti-Black racism last May and the reinvigorated conversation about the preservation of historical figures, he published a series of blog posts about the unifying power of histories. “There are threads that connect the history of Africa to the history of every other place in the world,” he said. “History tells us who we were, are and can be.”
As someone who wasn’t born or grew up in North America, Juma has a different approach to race. “Where I came from, everyone is black so there isn’t a perception that race is a barrier. When I left Uganda to Canada, my parents told me to go out there and if I did my best, something good would come out of it. So, I made the most out of every opportunity (here).”
Looking ahead, the doctoral student is unsure what the future holds—research, instruction, policy-making are all possible career paths and he’s open to each of them. “I value the process of building upon and sharing information, and as long as I keep on contributing and making an impact, I know I’ll be fulfilling my dream of helping my community.”