Moving Toward Health Equity with Uché Blackstock, MD
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What is Dr. Uché Blackstock’s personal and family background in medicine?
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You're listening to the Nocturnous Conversations. I'm Emily Silverman. In today's episode, we speak to a physician about her remarkable family history, her journey to uncover the racism that influences medicine, and her relentless quest to build a more equitable healthcare. Her name is Dr. Uce Blackstock, and she's a Harvard-trained emergency medicine doctor, fierce advocate for racial justice, and entrepreneur whose consulting company, Advancing Health Equity, is reshaping the way we address racism in healthcare today. Uce is also the author of the New York Times bestselling generational memoir, Legacy a black physician reckons with racism in medicine. In my conversation with Uche, we talked about her mother, a nephrologist, who paved the way for Uche and her sister to pursue careers in medicine.
Uche's personal experiences with the healthcare system, including a delayed diagnosis of appendicitis and two very different birth experiences, and the process by which Uce found her voice as an advocate. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. But first, here's Uche, reading a few lines from her book, Legacy.
Yeah.
My sister and I were only nineteen years old in nineteen ninety-seven when we lost our mother to leukemia. And she was just forty seven. She died too young, but by then her influence had indelibly rubbed off on us. Our mother's passion for learning Her dogged perseverance and her commitment to serving her community heavily influenced our own decision to become physicians. Oni and I both graduated from Harvard University and then attended Harvard Medical School. The school's first black mother daughter legacy graduates. Like her, we both went to work with historically underserved populations after graduating. My sister at a hospital in the Bronx, while I went to train at Kings County and SUNY Down State in Brooklyn, following in my mother's footsteps.
In the years since then, I have felt her by my side in so many of my own interactions with patients. Her ability to listen and truly care continues to be a model for me, and it's something that our patients are crying out for now more than ever.
I am here with Doctor Uce Blackstock. Uche, thank you so much for being here today.
Thanks for having
me. So this book offers an unflinching look at racism and medicine. And it's deeply personal. I had always known your work from afar, but didn't know as much about your personal story, so it was a real gift to be able to learn more about you and your upbringing and your family. For example, your mother, as you mentioned just now in that reading, Dr. Dale Gloria Blackstock was a nephrologist, and you talk about how you and your twin sister grew up playing with her doctor's bag. Tell us a bit about your mom's practice and what it was like to be a child witnessing that through the eyes of being her daughter.
I didn't realize it until I was much older, like what um rare and unique experience I had just having her as our mother. She was someone who was very, very committed to her work, incredibly purpose-driven. And given the kind of childhood that she had growing up. Essentially in poverty, being the first person in her family to go to college. It was really important for her, even though she went to Harvard Med School to come back to her own community to
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is Dr. Uché Blackstock’s personal and family background in medicine?
0:00–11:15
2
How did Dr. Blackstock’s mother’s nephrology practice influence her view of health equity?
11:15–22:18
3
What experiences shaped Dr. Blackstock’s understanding of racism in healthcare?
22:18–27:09
4
How does systemic racism affect clinical outcomes like kidney disease and maternal mortality?
27:09–34:32
5
What strategies does Dr. Blackstock use to advance health equity through her consulting firm?
34:32–41:12
6
Why did Dr. Blackstock leave academic medicine and what challenges did she face there?
41:12–46:52
7
How has the book *Legacy* impacted readers and what feedback has Dr. Blackstock received?
46:52–49:34