Dr. Layne was born in Barbados and moved to the US as a teenager to do his undergraduate studies at Harvard College. After graduation, he completed a Doctor of Medicine degree at Tulane University Medical School and then went back to Harvard Medical School to complete his post-graduate studies in Internal Medicine. He left the US and spent some time evaluating Healthcare systems on the continent of Africa, before returning to the United States to serve as Health Services Director of the Washington, DC branch of the Georgetown University Community Health Plan.

While in Washington DC, Dr. Layne completed a fellowship in Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the Veterans’ Hospital Medical Center and Washington Hospital Center. He moved to Atlanta in 1980 to help Dr. Louis Sullivan start the Clinical Division of the new Morehouse School of Medicine, the only minority Medical School to be founded in the US in the twentieth century.  Dr. Layne served as Director of Clinical Medicine of the new Morehouse Medical school before returning to private practice.