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Uché Blackstock

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Uché Blackstock
Blackstock addresses the United States House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis in 2020
Born (1977-11-04) November 4, 1977 (age 46)
Alma materHarvard University
Harvard University Medical School
Scientific career
InstitutionsNew York University School of Medicine
SUNY Downstate Medical Center
Mount Sinai Morningside

Uché Blackstock is an American emergency physician and former Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the New York University School of Medicine. She is the Founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, which partners with healthcare organizations to equip them with the tools needed to provide equitable care to each and every patient. During the COVID-19 pandemic Blackstock used social media to share her experiences and concerns as a physician working on the front lines and on racial health disparities and inequities exposed by the pandemic. She is best known for her work amplifying the message on racial health inequities and her media appearances speaking on the COVID-19 pandemic. She has been featured on Meet the Press, PBS NewsHour, Slate and Forbes among others. [1][2][3][4] Blackstock became a Yahoo! News Medical Contributor in June of 2020.

Early life and education

Blackstock is originally from Brooklyn.[5] She grew up in Crown Heights alongside her fraternal twin sister, Oni Blackstock.[6][7][6] Their mother, Dale Gloria Blackstock, studied medicine at Harvard University.[8][7][9] She was the first member of her family to attend college.[10] During her practice, she specialized in nephrology and served as president of an organization for Brooklyn's black women doctors.[7] Blackstock's father, Earl, was an accountant.[6] Blackstock and her sister spent much of their childhood with their mother at the hospital, or watching her work in community health programs in Brooklyn. They both graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1995 and attended undergrad and medical school at Harvard, following in their mother's footsteps.[6][7] During Blackstock's sophomore year, her mother fell ill with leukemia and in July 1997, died.[9][5]

During her time at Harvard University, Blackstock also took an interest in journalism, writing for The Harvard Crimson.[11] When Blackstock and her sister graduated from Harvard - undergrad in 1999 and medical school in 2005 - they became the first black mother-daughter legacy to do so.[9] Following graduation, Blackstock completed her residency at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, where she was named Chief Resident and specialized in emergency medicine. She later moved on to Mount Sinai Morningside to complete an emergency ultrasound fellowship in 2010.[12]

Career

Medicine

In July of 2010, Blackstock was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the New York University School of Medicine, where she held a simultaneous position as an emergency physician.[13] At the time, fewer than two percent of American physicians were black women.[9] Soon thereafter, in 2012, she was named Ultrasound Content Director at the university. In this role, Blackstock developed and implemented a longitudinal point-of-care ultrasound curriculum for medical students. In October of 2017, Blackstock was named the Faculty Director for Recruitment, Retention and Inclusion in the Office of Diversity Affairs at New York University School of Medicine, where she was responsible for developing and implementing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for Black, Latinx, and Indigenous faculty at the university.[14] Blackstock left NYU School of Medicine in 2019 due to the inhospitable environment for Black trainees and faculty. She wrote an op-ed to further detail in January of 2020.[15] Her main reasons included a toxic work environment, sexism, racism and denial of promotion.[15] She has called for academic medical centers to better appreciate and rectify the impact of racism in healthcare.[15][16] The move offered her a chance to further focus on her recently founded organization, Advancing Health Equity.[17]

Health equity

Blackstock has worked to bring attention to racism in healthcare since early in her career.[18][19][20][21] Her Mother's life challenges and death, along with the racial health inequities that Blackstock witnessed as a physician, were the inspiration to start her own organization.[22] In March 2018, Blackstock established Advancing Health Equity, an organization focused on partnering with healthcare and related organizations to address racial health inequities.[16][23][24] She believes that a diverse workforce, and one where everyone feels valued and respected, is essential for good patient care.[9] As part of the organization, Blackstock trains people in cognitive bias, structural racism, microaggressions and health disparities.[9][5] She created an analytical tool to help her clients assess racial equity within their organizational practices.[25] The organization has worked with medical centers, healthcare systems and health technology start-up companies. Previous clients include Salesforce, Northwestern Lurie Children's Hospital, and Partners HealthCare System.[26] In 2019, Blackstock was selected by Forbes as one of ten diversity and inclusion trailblazers you need to get familiar with.[27]

COVID-19

Blackstock works at an emergency care center in Brooklyn. The center usually deals with minor conditions, but during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Blackstock noticed that patients were presenting with the symptoms of coronavirus disease.[28] She used social media to describe the challenges that she had getting testing for her patients, especially "when celebrities are getting tested with ease and quick turnaround times".[29] She became overly concerned about how the coronavirus pandemic would affect black patients.[30] In an interview with Slate, Blackstock remarked, "When I heard about doctors in Italy having to ration ventilators and then the incredibly likely possibility that that is going to happen here, my first thought was so many Black people are going to die."[30] She was one of the first to sound the alarm about potential racial health inequities that would be exposed and amplified by the pandemic, and what federal, state and local officials needed to do to mitigate the virus' spread among the country's most vulnerable populations.[30] Throughout the crisis, Blackstock has appeared consistently on podcasts, radio, digital and network news committed to conveying responsibly and accurate information about the COVID-19 pandemic. In June of 2020, due to her media appearances and reputation, Blackstock was asked by Yahoo! News to be a Medical Contributor for the network.[31]

Publications

  • Why Black Doctors Like Me are Leaving Faculty Positions in Academic Medical Centers[32]
  • What the COVID-19 Pandemic Means for Black Americans[33]
  • Black Communities were Essentially Already Sick Before Coronavirus: Pandemic Highlights Preexisting Condition with Health Care and Race[34]
  • Community Health Workers are Essential in the Crisis. We Need More of Them[35]

Personal life

Blackstock has two children.[9] She is a popular science communicator, sharing her experiences as a black woman physician on Twitter.[citation needed] Her identical twin sister, Oni, is a physician in the South Bronx. Oni Blackstock conducts research into HIV in women of colour at Montefiore Medical Center.[7]

References

  1. ^ "Communities of color hit hardest by COVID-19". MSNBC.com.
  2. ^ "COVID-19 may not discriminate based on race -- but U.S. health care does". PBS NewsHour. 2 April 2020.
  3. ^ Craven, Julia (30 March 2020). "How Racial Health Disparities Will Play Out in the Coronavirus Pandemic". Slate Magazine.
  4. ^ Reid, Maryann. "Why Going To The Doctor As A Black Person Is Hard". Forbes.
  5. ^ a b c "Interview with Uché Blackstock, MD, Founder and CEO, Advancing Health Equity". Center for Health Technology Hunter College. 2020-02-11. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  6. ^ a b c d Cohen, Joyce (2006-02-12). "After a Life Together, Living Apart". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  7. ^ a b c d e "Family". hms.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  8. ^ Blackstock |, Uche (2019-11-28). "Uche Blackstock: Mother, daughters, doctors. Affirmative action at Harvard makes a generational ripple in improving black health care". Twin Cities. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  9. ^ a b c d e f g "Dr. Uché Blackstock Knows She's a Unicorn | The M Dash". M.M.LaFleur. 2019-08-30. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  10. ^ "About". Advancing Health Equity. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  11. ^ "Uche A. Blackstock | Writer Page | The Harvard Crimson". www.thecrimson.com. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  12. ^ "Uché Blackstock". www.acep.org. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  13. ^ "Congratulations Dr. Blackstock!". www.emra.org. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  14. ^ "About". Advancing Health Equity. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  15. ^ a b c R, Cary; says (2020-01-16). "Why black doctors like me are leaving academic medicine". STAT. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  16. ^ a b Reid, Maryann. "Why Going To The Doctor As A Black Person Is Hard". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  17. ^ "About". Advancing Health Equity. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  18. ^ Blackstock, Uché; Choo, Esther K (2020). "Race as a dynamic state: triangulation in health care". The Lancet. 395 (10217): 21. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(19)33143-5. ISSN 0140-6736. OCLC 8524155675. PMID 31982045.
  19. ^ Reddy, Sumathi (2018-01-22). "How Doctors Deal With Racist Patients". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  20. ^ Yang, Jessica (2019-09-09). "For Women of Color in Medicine, the Challenges Extend Beyond Education". Medium. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  21. ^ "Pushing back against patient bias". AAMC. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  22. ^ "Advancing Health Equity". Advancing Health Equity. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  23. ^ "Advancing Health Equity". Advancing Health Equity. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  24. ^ MPH, Lipi Roy, MD. "'It's My Calling To Change The Statistics': Why We Need More Black Female Physicians". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-04-05.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  25. ^ Gassam, Janice. "10 Diversity And Inclusion Trailblazers You Need To Get Familiar With". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  26. ^ "Advancing Health Equity". Advancing Health Equity. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  27. ^ Gassam, Janice. "10 Diversity And Inclusion Trailblazers You Need To Get Familiar With". Forbes.
  28. ^ "US doctors go online to reveal 'strong, loud' coronavirus truths". Asume Tech. 2020-04-02. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  29. ^ "One More Question That Katie Porter Should Have Asked". Psychology Today. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  30. ^ a b c Craven, Julia (2020-03-30). "How Racial Health Disparities Will Play Out in the Coronavirus Pandemic". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  31. ^ "https://twitter.com/uche_blackstock/status/1277586176422154240". Twitter. {{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help)
  32. ^ "Why black doctors like me are leaving academic medicine". STAT. 16 January 2020.
  33. ^ Blackstock, Uché. "What the COVID-19 Pandemic Means for Black Americans". Scientific American Blog Network.
  34. ^ Buchwald, Elisabeth. "'Black communities were essentially already sick before coronavirus': Pandemic highlights preexisting condition with health care and race". MarketWatch.
  35. ^ Kangovi, Shreya; Blackstock, Uché. "Opinion | Community health workers are essential in this crisis. We need more of them". Washington Post.
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