Dr. Uché Blackstock, a journalist who has written extensively on race and healthcare, was born in Brooklyn and grew up surrounded by Black women doctors like her mother and pediatrician. She attended Harvard Medical School with her twin sister Oni, where they made history as the first Black mother-daughter legacies in the school’s history.
In 2019, after leaving her position as a professor of emergency medicine at NYU Langone Health, Dr. Blackstock founded Advancing Health Equity, a consulting firm aimed at helping companies, hospitals and health systems understand the history of racism in medicine and eliminate biases to create plans for promoting equitable healthcare.
Through her work at Advancing Health Equity and her bestselling book, Legacy: A Mother-Daughter Journey Through Medicine and Racism, Dr. Blackstock has been able to make a larger impact than she could within a medical organization. The book is part family memoir and part call to action to address racial health disparities. Dr. Blackstock feels that she has been able to use her voice more effectively outside of academic medicine by addressing the intersectional issues that affect marginalized communities in healthcare through advocacy and journalism.
