Juan C. Celedon, M.D., Dr.PH

It’s easy to understand why Juan C. Celedon, M.D., Dr.PH., could have many times given up in his dream to become a physician and researcher. Throughout his medical education and career, the native of Colombia faced obstacles and personal setbacks that would have caused most people to quit. Dr. Celedon, who is an associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, refused to give up, he told an audience during Sunday’s Diversity Forum, which was supported by an educational grant from Merck. In addition to Dr. Celedon’s keynote address, the recipients of the 2010 Minority Trainee Travel Awards, also supported by Merck, were recognized.

In his presentation, “Chronicle of a Journey,” Dr. Celedon described growing up in Barranquilla, Colombia, on the Caribbean coast. Colombians of Caribbean descent are a minority in the country and discrimination in jobs and educational opportunity is common.

“We make up 30 percent of the population, but we’re considered different,” Dr. Celedon said. “Our accents are different. We look different. We’re treated differently.”

He was one of only four people of Caribbean descent in his class of 84 students accepted in 1980 by the country’s leading medical school, located in Bogota. A professor told him that his people could dance, but do little else.

After graduating in 1988 and sending more than 400 letters to every residency program in the U.S., Dr. Celedon received a few responses, including one from Lincoln Hospital, in the Bronx in New York. He began a fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at Brown University, in 1992, soon after marrying and soon after the death of his father, who he called his “inspiration in life.”

Looking for a job following his fellowship, Dr. Celedon again mailed more than 400 letters, this time to Veterans Administration hospitals around the country. Two responded, and he went to work for the VA in Erie, Pennsylvania. In 1997, his career advanced further when he was offered a research fellowship to study the genetic predisposition of asthma at the Channing Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The joy was short-lived.

In 1999, his only brother was murdered, and Dr. Celedon returned to Colombia to bury him and face a sobering reality: he realized he was the only surviving male in his family.

That same year he applied for his first NIH career-development award and was turned down. Nearly ready to quit, he applied again in 2000 and received the award. In 2003, Dr. Celedon was named assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and has received two NIH R01 grants.

He has since received the Brigham and Women’s Young Mentor Award, has been named an associate professor and in 2010 was nominated to join the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He also received Harvard’s A. Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award.

“There were times when my spirit faltered and I wanted to quit,” he said. “But then I would think of the people who had been killed in violence in my country and how they would do anything for one more day, and then I would go on.”

Dr. Celedon reminded the Diversity Forum attendees that medicine is a profession of passion and service.

“To me, success is remembering the many I have lost by serving those who remain,” he said.

The Diversity Forum and the MTTA program are supported by educational grants from Merck.