Dr. Rahmatu Kassimu has built her public-health leadership at the crossroads of evidence, lived experience, and a fierce commitment to community. Guided by the West African principle of Sankofa—“go back and bring it forward”—she left a 12-year career in the classroom to pour knowledge and care back into the communities that raised her. In this episode, she shares what it means to “do it scared”: to advocate for students finding their voices, to navigate a high-risk pregnancy as a Black maternal-health expert, and to insist that stories are as essential to health as data. Together we explore how courage can be inherited and renewed—through storytelling, through village-building, and through showing up fully in the fight for equity.

Meet Dr. Rahmatu Kassimu

Dr. Rahmatu Kassimu, known widely as Dr. K., is a public health strategist, educator, and founder of Dr. K.’s Health Minute, a platform committed to dismantling the systems that silence, marginalize, or erase Black communities. With a dynamic background that spans sociology, health studies, education leadership, and community organizing, Dr. K. merges evidence-based practice with lived experience to build equity-centered systems and stories that heal.

Over the last decade, she has empowered students, families, and professionals through culturally grounded wellness strategies, academic writing coaching, grief support, and reproductive justice work. Whether she’s facilitating a workshop on maternal mental health, decoding health policy on Instagram, or mentoring future researchers, Dr. K. leads with radical empathy and unapologetic purpose.

Her mission? To make complex ideas accessible, advocate for those unheard, and expand what it means to live well, mind, body, and soul.

Listen To This Episode of The Courageous Public Health Podcast

Conversation Highlights

• Matrescence & Motherhood: Dr. K opens up about the shock of early postpartum anxiety — including her day-eight realization that she was fully responsible for “this potato with poor neck control.”
• From Classroom to Courage: Guided by the principle of Sankofa, she reflects on 12 years as an educator, helping students find their voices, even supporting a student-led walk-out. Leaving teaching was a leap of courage to live her own advice.
• Pregnancy as Lived Public Health: Despite being an expert in Black maternal health, she discovered how little she actually knew about pregnancy until living through high-risk complications and an emergency C-section herself.
• Storytelling as Public-Health Practice: She argues that we’ve lost crucial intergenerational knowledge because we don’t pass down full stories about pregnancy, birth, and health experiences.
• Showing Up Fully: As a Black African-American woman with Liberian-Ghanaian roots, she insists that lived experience is a strength — not a liability — in public-health work.
• Power of Community: Calls for a return to wrap-around, community-centered care and shared responsibility, rather than the “me-over-we” individualism undermining public health.
• A Vision for the Future: Envisions healthier communities built on storytelling, intimacy, and strong villages of support — the kind of care she intentionally cultivates for her own daughter.

“We have to come back to the community narrative. We can’t keep thinking, ‘If you have, that means I can’t have.’”— Dr. Rahmatu Kassimu

Stay In Touch:

Dr. K.'s Health Minute - https://www.drkshealthminuteextended.com/

Dr. K on LinkedIn - https://www.instagram.com/dr.ks.healthminute/

Dr. K on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/dr.ks.healthminute/

Dr. K on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/DrKsHealthMinute

Dr. K on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.ks.healthminute

Email Dr. Kristi McClamroch - [email protected]

Dr. Kristi McClamroch on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristi-mcclamroch/

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At Courageous Public Health, we are turning up the volume on courage within women who are doing the work of public health. We support public health organizations through workshop design and facilitation, and speaking engagements. Interested in working with us? Reach out on email, LinkedIn, or our website!