Dr. Uché Blackstock, who grew up in Brooklyn with the belief that most doctors were Black women like her mother and pediatrician, was shocked to discover that only about 5% of practicing U.S. physicians are Black when she entered Harvard Medical School with her twin sister Oni. The Blackstocks made history as the first Black mother-daughter legacies at Harvard Medical School.
In 2019, Dr. Blackstock left her position as a professor of emergency medicine at NYU Langone Health to address the issue of racial inequality in medicine. She founded Advancing Health Equity, a consulting firm aimed at helping companies, hospitals, and health systems learn about the history of racism in medicine, eliminate unconscious biases, and create strategies for promoting equitable healthcare.
Through her work at Advancing Health Equity and her best-selling book “Legacy”, which combines family memoir with a call to action to address racial health disparities, Dr. Blackstock has been able to have a greater impact than she would have had in academia. She believes that using her voice in this way has allowed her to make a difference in addressing racial inequalities in healthcare.