Olusola Orimoloye Took Courses Without Credit In order to Solve Global Cardiovascular Problems



Olusola Orimoloye to #JHSPH all the way from Ondo State, Nigeria, to learn more about epidemiological research and how he could use data to highlight cardiovascular disease problems globally. He says one of the reasons he chose to pursue his MPH at Johns Hopkins University was because it had so many interesting courses related to cardiovascular disease epidemiology.

"Because of credit requirements I wasn’t able to take some of my cardiovascular epidemiology courses [for credit], but I sat through all of them,” he says. Even though he wasn't taking them for credit, he seized the opportunity to attend every lecture and participate in class. "I got a lot of information from those classes and I think I'll be running with those things for the rest of my research career.”

During the summer term Olusola volunteered with SOURCE (Student Outreach Resource Center) at JHU and worked alongside Lisa Cooper at the Welch Center to develop a training manual for community health workers to train others to monitor their blood pressure at home. "I think that engaging with community workers … that’s really critical because they just go straight in the community from there,” he says. He also worked with Cooper in a blood pressure standardization work group to study factors associated with compliance with home blood pressure monitoring. Olusola says, "It was really interesting to me because ... I’m actually doing stuff which is being used … [and] it has that sort of gratifying feeling to it.”

A fully licensed physician, Olusola will spend a year after graduation for optional practical training, working on clinical research related to cardiovascular disease. His overall goal is to reduce the global burden of cardiovascular disease. After his year of research, he’ll work on training to become a cardiologist with an end goal of working in interventional cardiology and clinical research. He says, "I think things will generally work out for me, I'm super excited to graduate.” Congrats, Olusola! 🎓 #GoHop #JHU2017

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