As a boy of nine years, Trevor Dixon left Jamaica with his family to grow up in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
Now, Trevor Dixon is Dr. Dixon and works in emergency medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, with 20 years clocked in this field.
From a family of educators and medical professionals, Dr. Dixon looked to how he could “give back” to the land of his birth. In 2007, he began giving ultrasound training — his undergraduate specialty — in Jamaica.
Ultrasound is the first diagnostic tool for unstable patients, gunshot, knife, blunt trauma, and ectopic pregnancy. Hospitals, there, had the equipment but did not know how to use them. Dr. Dixon also helped obtain two more ultrasounds for the country’s hospitals.
In 2011, he founded Jamaicans Abroad Helping Jamaicans at Home (JAHJAH) to provide health services on the island. Its mission expanded to renovate woefully dilapidated healthcare facilities and the Jamaican government matched monies to renovate worn-out emergency rooms.
Most recently, the organization built a sick bay for the Hanbury Children’s Home in Kendal, Manchester.
JAHJAH facilitates a yearly conference and weekly consultations between Dr. Maria Sulis at the Pediatrics Department, Columbia University Medical School, and the Pediatric Oncology Unit at Bustamante Children’s Hospital, Kingston. The organization also collaborates with Jamaica’s Ministry of Health, Caribbean and Jamaican nurses associations, and non-profits such as the Coalition to Preserve Reggae Music and Team Jamaica Bickle.
On the island, JAHJAH dialogues with local health leaders. Projects also include: Healing in the Dancehall where they take information about HIV, diabetes and hypertension to the clubs; One Love, One Heart, where they screen for cardiac diseases, and the Ulster Spring Health Center, a collaborative project with Rutgers NJ Medical School.
