Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER nONE OF TIME'S 100 MOST INFLUENTUAL PEOPLE IN GLOBAL HEALTH n nThis book is more than a memoir--it also serves as a call to action to create a more equitable healthcare system for patients of color, particularly Black women. --Essence n nLegacy is both a compelling memoir and an edifying analysis of the inequities in the way we deliver healthcare in America. Uché Blackstock is a force of nature. --Abraham Verghese, MD n n[An] extraordinary family story. --The New York Times Book Review n nRequired reading for all medical students. --Gayle King, CBS Mornings n nThe rousing, captivating story of a Black physician, her career in medicine, and the deep inequities that still exist in the U.S. healthcare system n nGrowing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uché Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. In the 1980s, their mother headed an organization of Black women physicians, and for years the girls watched these fiercely intelligent women in white coats tend to their patients and neighbors, host community health fairs, cure ills, and save lives. n nWhat Dr. Uché Blackstock did not understand as a child--or learn about at Harvard Medical School, where she and her sister had followed in their mother's footsteps, making them the first Black mother-daughter legacies from the school--were the profound and long-standing systemic inequities that mean just 2 percent of all U.S. physicians today are Black women; the racist practices and policies that ensure Black Americans have far worse health outcomes than any other group in the country; and the flawed system that endangers the well-being of communities like theirs. As an ER physician, and later as a professor in academic medicine, Dr. Blackstock became profoundly aware of the systemic barriers that Black patients and physicians continue to face. n nLegacy is a journey through the critical intersection of racism and healthcare. At once a searing indictment of our health-care system, a generational family memoir, and a call to action, Legacy is Dr. Blackstock's odyssey from child to medical student to practicing physician--to finally seizing her own power as a health equity advocate against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.n