Dr. Philomena Asante is a pediatrician, college health expert, public health leader, and physician entrepreneur passionate about creating a diverse healthcare leadership workforce. She is the founder and executive director of the Diva Docs Black Women MD Network Inc. not-for-profit, which was selected as a finalist in the 2022 MassChallenge U.S. Early Stage Startup Accelerator Program.
Dr. Asante received her bachelor’s degree in French language and literature with high honors from Harvard College, her medical degree from the University of Rochester School of Medicine, her Master of Public Health degree in international health and a certificate in clinical effectiveness from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.
She finished a pediatric residency at Westchester Medical Center, an affiliate of New York Medical College, and then went to Boston for her post-doctoral fellowship. Dr. Asante was the first general academic pediatric fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, and completed a Harvard-wide pediatric health services research fellowship.
Dr. Asante has experience in primary care, urgent care, college health, and public health. In recent years her career path has focused on the intersection of health and education: From 2014-2018, Dr. Asante served as the director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Health at the Boston Public Health Commission, where she oversaw a citywide program that operated seven school-based primary health care centers in Boston public high schools in collaboration with Boston Medical Center. From 2018-2020, Dr. Asante was the medical director at Northeastern University Health and Counseling Services.
Currently, Dr. Asante is a staff physician at Boston University Student Health Services where she provides direct clinical care to Boston University students, while pursuing her Social Impact/Non-Profit Management MBA degree at Boston University's Questrom School of Business.
This spring, Dr. Asante will transition to a new leadership role as the Physician Chief of Student Medicine at Yale University/Yale Health.
Dr. Asante is a founding member of PROWD (Promoting and Respecting Our Women Doctors), a national organization of gender-equity researchers who collaborate with each other on a volunteer basis to support the healthcare workforce. She was Vice-Chair of the Women Physicians Section Governing Council at the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS), and a member of the MMS Committee on Diversity in Medicine. She has also served as the deputy chair of the Alumni Engagement Committee at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.
Dr. Asante is the creator of the Diva Docs series of health columns highlighting the important perspectives of Black women physicians on health disparities in Coverage, the not-for-profit public health news website of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA).
Dr. Asante enjoys spending time with her family, including her son, who is now a college freshman. A design enthusiast, and an avid collector of mid-century modern furniture, Dr. Asante loves taking long walks by the ocean, shopping in quaint New England towns, traveling to tropical countries, baking deserts, and growing colorful, fragrant flowers in her garden.