In buckle of ‘Stroke Belt', a young doctor wants to get students interested in the brain
“The goal is to pique interest early in life so they can continue to capture young, bright minds for neurology,” Dr. Balaji Krishnaiah said. (Mark Weber/The Daily Memphian file)
When vascular neurologist Dr. Balaji Krishnaiah came to Memphis in 2017, only one or two medical students — out of local classes of 180 at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Medicine — wanted to go into neurology.
“If you look at the entire country, the percentage of medical students who choose neurology is 4% or less, and we call the Southern states, like Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee, a neurology desert,” said Krishnaiah, stroke medical director at Methodist Neuroscience Institute and neuroscience course director and neurology education vice chair at UTHSC’s College of Medicine.
The Southeastern U.S. is the nation’s “Stroke Belt,” Krishnaiah said, an area with high stroke mortality. Memphis could be considered the buckle, with stroke being the city’s fifth leading cause of death.
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Aisling Mäki
Aisling Mäki covers health care, banking and finance, technology and professions. After launching her career in news two decades ago, she worked in public relations for almost a decade before returning to journalism in 2022.
As a health care reporter, she’s collaborated with The Carter Center, earned awards from the Associated Press and Society of Professional Journalists and won a 2024 Tennessee Press Association first-place prize for her series on discrepancies in Shelby County life expectancy by ZIP code.
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