Many people have recently seen the movie “Concussion” at the theaters which is about a revolutionary neurologist who transformed the way the medical field handles blunt force trauma impact and its effects on the brain. However, everyone does not know who Dr. Bennet Omalu truly is and how much he has changed medicine today.
Born in Nigeria in 1968 during the Nigerian civil war, Dr. Omalu was the 6th of 7 children of a civil engineer and a seamstress. In the year 1991 Dr. Omalu received his BS degree from the University of Nigeria, and 13 years later in 2004 received his Masters in Public Health from the University of Pittsburg. Not only did he go to school for medical studies, but in 2008 he received his Masters of Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University, so quite obviously this Dr. Omalu is a well-learned man.
Dr. Omalu was the first to identify, describe and name Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) as a disease in football players and wrestlers. While working at the coroner’s office in September 2002, Omalu examined the body of Mike Webster, a former pro football player with the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers. Before his death from heart attack at the age of 50, Webster was showing patterns of distressing behavior that piqued the interest of Dr. Omalu to further investigate potential causes of death. After carefully examining Webster’s brain, Omalu discovered clumps of tau proteins, which impair function upon accumulation and coined the term that we know today as CTE to explain the phenomena. It was similar to “dementia pugilista,” a degenerative disease documented decades earlier in boxers, though it had yet to be connected to football players.
Upon the publication of his findings, Dr. Omalu was met with harsh backlash and opposition from the NFL and its Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (MTBI) Committee who called his research flawed and demanded a retraction of his published work. Instead, Dr. Omalu continued to push the envelope by with his examination of Terry Long who was another former NFL player that committed suicide at age 45 and he discovered the same buildup of tau proteins that he found in Mike Webster’s brain.
Despite the NFL’s denial of a “concussion problem”, Omalu and his colleagues scored their 1st victory when the family of Mike Webster was awarded a large settlement in court in December of 2006. Omalu moved to California in the fall of 2007 to begin his new position as chief medical examiner of San Joaquin County and in 2008 he also published his first book, “Play Hard, Die Young: Football Dementia, Depression, and Death.” He advanced the study of CTE by branching out to athletes from other sports and war veterans. Dr. Omalu has not only played a vital role in the advancement of medicine and health, but he has set an amazing example as a role model for young Black men and women that education and diligence can take be used as stepping stones to not only create a better life for yourself as a person, but also for the world around you. So to Dr. Omalu, thank you for being a man of purpose and happy Black History Month!
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A Man of Purpose: Dr. Bennet Omalu
February 18, 2016
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