Identical twins Travan and Travis Jasper grew up without running water in a poor Richmond, Virginia neighborhood, hauling buckets from local parks just to get by. Decades later, they returned home to co-direct the emergency department at Chippenham Hospital, a Level I Trauma Center in the same city where they once went hungry as kids.
The brothers started as co-directors of Chippenham's emergency department in April, according to CBS News, whose Steve Hartman profiled the pair's journey from a struggling Richmond neighborhood to leading Chippenham's ER. The station reports the twins grew up in poverty in that same Richmond community, and that they now reside in the same building as adults, having stayed connected in nearly every phase of life since childhood.
To keep colleagues and patients from mixing them up on shift, the twins wear different-colored scrubs: Travan in purple, Travis in green, per the same CBS News account. It's a small, practical fix for an unusual professional arrangement.
A Childhood Hospital Visit That Set Their Path
The brothers' drive toward medicine traces back to a painful memory from when they were 12 years old. Their uncle, who struggled with alcoholism and was suffering from liver failure, was hospitalized, and the physician treating him was dismissive toward the boys, telling them their uncle was simply getting what he deserved, per the CBS News report.
Travan has said the brothers discussed their reaction to that moment in a hospital hallway, and they vowed then to become better doctors than the man who had treated their uncle with such contempt. Travis has said their difficult experiences shaped who they ultimately became, the network reports.
That vow carried them through John Marshall High School in Richmond, where they graduated as co-valedictorians before earning full scholarships to Stanford University, as detailed in a 1987 Congressional Record entry cited by IOL. The twins went on to attend the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, scoring within one point of each other on the MCAT, according to the outlet.
Matching Their Residencies Through the Couples Match
Determined not to be separated during their medical training, the brothers used the National Resident Matching Program's couples match process to complete their emergency medicine residency together at the University of Michigan, IOL reports. That same drive to stay paired professionally would define much of their careers.
Before returning to Richmond this year, the twins spent 15 years serving as co-medical directors of the Emergency Response Unit at Fairview Park Hospital in Dublin, Georgia, according to 13WMAZ. The station also reports the brothers were born just 37 seconds apart; they were 56 when they assumed their joint leadership roles at Chippenham in April 2026.
Preparing to Treat Old Neighbors and Friends
Coming home to practice medicine in the neighborhood where they grew up carried its own complications. Before starting at Chippenham, the Jaspers organized a meeting with childhood friends and former neighborhood residents to address their own anxieties about potentially treating people they'd grown up alongside, according to Tuko.
The twins serve as co-directors of Chippenham's emergency department. Chippenham itself is a 466-bed acute care facility, and it holds state designation as a Level I Trauma Center and a burn center, according to the Virginia Department of Health.
Both brothers have told CBS News that being at Chippenham is amazing — a homecoming that closes a loop stretching back to childhood hunger and a hospital hallway vow.
Family and Community Life Beyond the ER
Outside the hospital, the brothers share eight children between them and stay involved in Richmond through youth mentoring and youth basketball coaching. CBS News notes they still reside in the same building, a living arrangement that echoes the closeness that carried them from a water-scarce Richmond childhood all the way to co-running Chippenham's emergency room.
