Among the tools in Ralph Northam’s Norfolk exam room is a set of colored blocks.
He can use them to check whether a child knows their colors or favors one hand over the other. Asking a child to stack the pieces tells him something else.
“I can have them stack these and see how their dexterity is,” he said.
It is familiar work for Northam, a pediatric neurologist at Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters who returned to his practice after leaving the governor’s office in January 2022.
More than four years later, his days revolve around patients, their families and the young doctors learning alongside him.
The return happened quickly. His successor, Glenn Youngkin, was inaugurated on a Saturday. Northam said he was seeing patients again that Monday. His wife, Pam, jokes that they did not even take a vacation first, he said.
Northam usually arrives around 7 or 7:15 a.m., before the office opens at 8, to review lab results and other tests and contact patients. He sees about 15 patients a day, usually finishing around 4 or 4:30 p.m., and shares on-call duties with other physicians in his group.
Some families need a moment to place his face. Northam said parents sometimes recognize him from television, particularly his frequent appearances during the COVID-19 pandemic, but cannot immediately work out why he looks familiar.
He sometimes jokes that they are confusing him with his brother. Eventually, he tells them he used to be their governor, and the conversation returns to the child’s care.
For Antoinique Hanna, of Newport News, that relationship began with a medical emergency.
Her son, Zanauri, was diagnosed with epilepsy in September 2023, when he was 16, the family said.
“I was playing football. I was in school, going to school every day like a regular high school kid,” he said. “And then I woke up one morning and I just started having a seizure before school.”
An ambulance took him to a hospital on the Peninsula, his mother said. After another seizure, he was transferred to CHKD. Northam became his neurologist.
The epilepsy diagnosis was unfamiliar to the family. Zanauri, now 19, said Northam helped them understand the condition. They said Northam also arranged a referral to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland, where Zanauri said he received additional care.
When Zanauri struggled emotionally, Hanna said, Northam talked with him and recommended people who could help.
“It’s like when you leave, it’s like you got all your questions answered,” she said of appointments with Northam. “You just have no worries.”
Northam had practiced medicine in Norfolk for years before entering statewide office. He said he began seeing patients there in 1992 and continued while serving in the state Senate and as lieutenant governor.
He traces his interest in public service to his parents: His mother was a nurse, and his father was a lawyer who became a commonwealth’s attorney. Medicine and elected office both offered ways to respond to other people’s needs, he said.
Northam said traveling across Virginia as governor exposed him to families struggling with access to health care, education, housing and other needs.
“I have more empathy for what people are going through,” he said.
He points to Medicaid expansion as one of the accomplishments he values most from his administration. Virginia approved the expansion in 2018, and coverage for newly eligible adults began in January 2019.
He also remains involved in politics, he said, helping candidates with events and participating in forums with former governors.
His governorship was also marked by the 2019 yearbook scandal.
In February 2019, a racist photo surfaced on his page in Eastern Virginia Medical School’s 1984 yearbook. It showed one person in blackface and another wearing Ku Klux Klan robes.
Northam initially said he was in the photo and apologized. The next day, he denied being either person. He separately acknowledged wearing blackface for a Michael Jackson costume. He remained in office despite calls from both parties to resign.
An investigation commissioned by the medical school could not determine conclusively whether he appeared in the yearbook photo.
“I don’t think that’s what people will remember me by. Again, I think they will remember me by my life of public service,” Northam said, looking out the large window of his CHKD office toward the ships on the water.
Back in the clinic, Northam spends part of his time teaching medical students and pediatric residents. He said his experience as a physician and elected official gives him a perspective on both patient care and the policies that shape it.
“The most important thing in child neurology and really in medicine is to listen to the patient,” he said.
Pam Northam is a member of WHRO’s Board of Directors. Board members do not influence editorial decisions. Read more about our Standards of Journalism here.
