Dr. Joel Bervell

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Dr. Joel Bervell

Dr. Joel Bervell, MD is a Ghanaian-American physician, Peabody Award-winning science communicator, and one of medicine's most recognized digital voices. Known online as the “Medical Mythbuster,” he has spent his career pulling buried truths into the open. Through viral digital storytelling, he challenges misinformation, exposes inequities in healthcare, and makes complex medical concepts and systems understandable to millions.

His platform reflects the reach of that mission. With more than 2.5 million followers across @joelbervell, Joel reaches over 30 million people every month and has generated more than 500 million impressions, not by simplifying medicine, but by refusing to let its most uncomfortable realities stay hidden.

Joel is a medical contributor at MS NOW, where he brings his signature myth-busting approach to health, medicine, and misinformation for a national news audience. He hosts The Dose, a podcast produced by The Commonwealth Fund, where he has interviewed guests including Academy Award–winning actor and activist Lupita Nyong’o, former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, and leading voices across medicine, policy, science, and culture about the forces shaping American healthcare. He also created The Doctor Is In, an animated series making complex medical history accessible to everyone, now streaming on YouTube and Prime Video. His work sits at the intersection of storytelling and accountability, using digital media to do what peer-reviewed papers alone cannot.

Joel is also the author of the forthcoming book The Default Body, to be published by Henry Holt and Company. The book examines how medicine came to build a “default” human body and what happens to patients who fall outside it.

Long before his audience reached millions, Joel was organizing around inequity inside medicine itself. He earned his BA in Molecular Cellular Developmental Biology from Yale University before completing a Master's in Medical Science at Boston University. He later attended Washington State University Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, where he served as Medical Student Council President, founded the Coug Health Academic Mentoring Program (CHAMP), and helped expand opportunities for underrepresented students pursuing medicine. Today, he is an Internal Medicine resident physician in Washington State, continuing to care for patients while working across media, research, and public health. His academic work has been published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery and the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

His work has been featured by The New York Times, NPR, Good Morning America, The Kelly Clarkson Show, Vox, WebMD, and more. That mission has carried him into rooms that shape public conversation and policy: the White House, the FDA, the Clinton Foundation, TED, SXSW, Aspen Ideas: Health, the Milken Global Conference, the Congressional Black Caucus, Google, Meta, and the Association of American Medical Colleges. He advises the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the Council for Responsible Social Media on misinformation and health equity.

Joel has also collaborated with organizations and brands including Google, Neutrogena, Microsoft, Samsung, BET, and the American Medical Association to build campaigns rooted in public health education. But the mission underneath the partnerships has remained the same.

The recognition has followed. In 2025, TIME Magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential Digital Voices. He is a 2025 Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and All Star Alum, a 2024 TED Fellow, a Smithsonian Channel Cyclebreaker, a Scientific American Revolutionary, and a Rock Health Top 50 Leader in Digital Health. His work has been recognized with a Peabody Award, two Webby Awards (2025 and 2026), and a 2023 Anthem Award Gold. He was also named a National Minority Quality Forum 40 Under 40 Leader in Minority Health and received the National Medical Association's Emerging Scholar Award, the organization's highest academic honor for a student. Mashable called him "your next must-follow creator."

Beyond medicine and media, Joel is the co-founder of Hugs For, a nonprofit that has mobilized hundreds of volunteers, raised over $500,000, and organized service trips across Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, and Uganda. He also serves in advisory roles with Every Cure and the Ron Brown Leaders Network Council.

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