John Yang:

Dr. Uché Blackstock has seen firsthand how medical racism shapes America's health care system. She's seen it both as a physician and as a patient. She's dedicated her career to work at the intersection of medicine, health equity and systemic racism.

She's an emergency medicine physician and is CEO and founder of Advancing Health Equity, an organization which works to dismantle racism in health care. And now Dr. Blackstock has written a memoir entitled "Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine," details both historic health care inequities and her own family history.

Dr. Blackstock, thanks for joining us. I love the title Legacy because there are really two legacies that run through this book. I want to start with the family legacy. Your mother was what was very rare in the 80s and 90s. A black female physician, how did watching her work seeing her go to work every day and actually seeing her at work? How did that affect your decision to become a physician? We should mention your twin sisters also a physician

Dr. Uché Blackstock, CEO and founder of Advancing Health Equity: Yes. Well, obviously she was a huge influence on us. She had a very different upbringing than we did. She was born in poverty and public assistance the first person in her family to graduate from college and then she went to medical school, Harvard Medical, then she came back after medical school to practice in the community in which she grew up in.

And so that was a powerful message for us that you know, you go, and you know, you get a great education, you come back and bring those resources back, and you help — you help those that are your family and neighbors. And that's exactly what she did. And she would get together with other black women, physicians in our community and hold community health fairs, really to help out the folks who lived in our neighborhood. And I love that message that she sent to us.

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