by Sally James
(SOUTH SEATTLE EMERALD) When Dr. Anisa Ibrahim was a child at a refugee camp in Kenya, she remembers admiring the health care workers who took care of the people there. She began telling people she wanted to be a doctor when she grew up. In her homeland of Somalia, war had made living impossible, so her family fled the country when she was 5 years old in 1992.
Ibrahim is now the boss of the pediatric clinic at Harborview Medical Center. Earlier this year, the Carnegie Corporation of New York named her a Great Immigrants honoree of 2021.
In hindsight, she doesn’t think her young self completely comprehended what it meant to become a doctor.
“I did look forward to seeing my pediatrician and I did look forward to learning and I was curious. … I was also very determined. I was one of those kids who is ‘I want to know. I want to learn. I want to lead. I want to figure things out,’” she told the Emerald.
But she can see why medicine attracted her. Ibrahim’s younger sister had measles as a child because she was not immunized like Ibrahim and her brother. She remembers that doctors seemed to be powerful healers. She also welcomed the yearly physicals at Harborview from her own pediatrician, Dr. Eleanor Graham and the way the doctor helped her whole family.
Graham encouraged Ibrahim’s dreams of becoming a doctor. Today, Graham is retired from being an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington. In an interview with CNN, Graham said seeing Ibrahim become the head of the clinic at Harborview was one of her own career highlights.
