Johnson applied to Brown during his sophomore year of college as part of the Early Identification Program in Medicine, one element of the longstanding Brown-Tougaloo Partnership. He’d heard that New England tends to be a bit colder, both in climate and attitude, but when he met people at Brown, those concerns melted away. During his admissions interview at the medical school, he said he felt warmth radiating from Brown faculty and staff.  

“I had a really good feeling,” Johnson said. “I knew that Brown was where I was supposed to be. I couldn’t imagine myself doing my medical training anywhere else.”

The Brown community turned out to be even more supportive than Johnson expected, both of his academic pursuits as well as his extracurricular involvement and ideas.

“Anything that I've had the passion and drive to do, Brown has been in full support,” Johnson said.

Johnson is passionate about wellness, among other priorities, and he decided in medical school to become more intentional about his mental health. He was inspired by his experiences and those of his peers to create a mental health screening tool and resource referral for medical students. With the support of Kelly Holder, the medical school’s chief wellness officer, the screening is now embedded into the curriculum for third-year Warren Alpert Medical School students.

Photography is another enduring interest of Johnson’s — one that the medical school has supported and encouraged. In 2020, he turned to taking pictures as a way to process the intense emotions he felt after the killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd. During his second year of medical school, Johnson had a “vision,” as he called it, of publicly exhibiting the photos he had taken during that charged time. Medical school leaders not only green-lighted Johnson’s idea, but also provided funding to display the photos in the atrium of the Warren Alpert Medical School.

The exhibit, titled “I Can’t Remember What I Yelled Back,” included large, empathetic images of Johnson’s family members, friends and neighbors in Greenville, Mississippi, and depicted the beauty and joy of Black lives in the American South. 

Practicing medicine has often been referred to as art, and Johnson sees strong similarities between the two.

“I love art and medicine deeply, and I think it’s because at their foundation, they're really the same thing,” Johnson said. “They both require curiosity, attention and care; they’re both a form of deeply engaging with humanity.”

During the down-time before starting his medical residency, Johnson is focusing on photography, thinking about the types of images he’d like to make and taking pictures of people in his community in Greenville. He says the perspective he’s bringing back to Mississippi and forward into his medical career has changed because of the people he’s met at Brown. From his arrival on campus, students, faculty and staff have not only challenged his assumptions, but have shown respectful curiosity and genuine interest in how and what he thinks.

“When you come from a small community, some things are just accepted as truth — you believe it because you’ve never been presented with any other perspective outside of what's right in front of you,” Johnson said. “Coming to Brown really expanded the way that I thought. It made me more open to other people's perspectives. It made me more confident to be myself, and to let other people be themselves, as well.”

In his Commencement remarks to his classmates, likely the last time they’re all gathered together, Johnson plans to remind his fellow graduates of how special they are, and share his hope for their futures as physicians.

“I want us to grow, but not grow into something different — grow into more of what we already are,” he said.