Dr. Iyesatta Massaquoi Emeli is an Emergency Medicine Distinguished Physician and Assistant Professor at Emory University. She was raised in Sierra Leone. She earned her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Harvard University, her medical degree from Case Western Reserve University and she did her residency training at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Emeli also has an expertise and background in medical informatics and earned a Masters degree in applied public health informatics from Emory School of Public Health. She is currently part of a working group at Emory tasked with developing virtual acute unscheduled care models. In 2021, she was named an Innovation and Discovery in the Emergent and Acute Science (IDEAS) Scholar and she is also currently a National Foundation of Emergency Medicine (NFEM) Scholar.
Dr. Emeli has over 20 years of clinical experience. She is deeply interested in the intersection of
medicine and technology. She has worked internationally in Ghana, Uganda, Malawi and Sierra
Leone and has in the past served as American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP)
ambassador to Sierra Leone. She currently serves on the Executive Committee of the ACEP
telehealth section. Of particular interest to her is the sustainable development of healthcare
infrastructure in the African setting; be it through education, use of technology, capacity
development and/or collaboration with higher resource institutions.
Dr. Emeli is also short story writer. In 2002, she won the Richard J. Margolis Award for her
stories about the impact of war on Sierra Leone’s children. Her work has appeared in the New
York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Journal of the American Medical Association,
Annals of Emergency Medicine, Eclectica Magazine, Midnight & Indigo Magazine, the
Examined Life Journal and on the medical blog KevinMD.