About this episode

Dr. Uché Blackstock discusses her departure from academia and her journey towards advocating for health equity.

Dr. Uché Blackstock spent almost a decade as an associate professor at NYU School of Medicine. From the outside she looked happy and successful — inside, she had never felt so invisible, undervalued, and underappreciated. So she left. When she wrote her resignation op-ed on why Black faculty leave academic medicine, she was sobbing — grieving the career she wished she could have had. That piece became lightning in a bottle, followed by her instant New York Times bestselling book, Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine. In this Inspiring Women conversation, host Laurie McGraw sits down with the founder of Advancing Health Equity to talk about the moment the window on health equity swung wide open in 2020 — and what happens now that it's closing. They get honest about the difference between performative statements and real systemic change, why the work is being renamed and re-embedded rather than erased, and why some disparities — like maternal health — are still getting worse. She breaks down the strategic shift her own organization had to make when the inbound stopped overnight: from trainings to restructuring, from the moral case to the ROI case, from many…

People in this episode

Host: Laurie McGraw

Guest: Dr. Uché Blackstock

Topics covered

• health equity
• academic medicine
• systemic change
• burnout
• racial disparities
• leadership
• personal growth

Keywords

• health equity
• academic medicine
• burnout
• systemic change
• racial disparities
• leadership
• personal growth
• NYU School of Medicine
• Advancing Health Equity
• Legacy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: NYU School of Medicine, Advancing Health Equity

Books & works: Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine

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