Isioma Dianne Okolo

Isioma D Okolo is a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, global public health researcher and writer whose work sits at the intersection of clinical care, equity and systems change. A graduate of Edinburgh Medical School, she has built a career focused on improving outcomes for women and marginalised communities through both frontline medicine and structural advocacy.

Trained in global health at Harvard, Isioma combines clinical expertise with policy insight, community organising and scholarship. Her work spans women’s health across the life course, the hidden curriculum of medicine, leadership through professional transitions, and the social and political determinants of health.

Isioma mentors students at the University of Edinburgh, including African and Caribbean students in Edinburgh Medical School and black women in societies university-wide.

She has led and supported grassroots initiatives addressing racialised maternal health inequalities in the NHS, gender-based violence, FGM/C (female genital mutilation or cutting), and maternal health inequities, and serves in advisory and trustee roles within global and community health organisations. Through her writing, teaching, and public engagement, Isioma is committed to reimagining medicine as more humane, equitable and fit for the lives people actually live.

Isioma led Scotland’s first and largest community participatory initiative to improve inequalities for black women and babies. Known as Nothing About Us, Without Us (NAUWU), the report has now been adopted by the Scottish Government as evidence for national strategic recommendations.