2024

Dr. Uché Blackstock

Best-selling Author, Founder & CEO, Advancing Health Equity

Dr. Uché Blackstock is the founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, appears regularly on MSNBC and NBC News, and is a former associate professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and the former faculty director for recruitment, retention, and inclusion in the Office of Diversity Affairs at NYU School of Medicine. Dr. Blackstock founded Advancing Health Equity in 2019 with the mission of partnering with healthcare organizations to dismantle racism in healthcare and to close the gap in racial health inequities. She was recognized by Forbes magazine, in 2019, as one of “10 Diversity and Inclusion Trailblazers You Need to Get Familiar With”. In 2020, she was one of thirty-one inaugural leaders awarded an unrestricted grant for her advocacy work from the Black Voices for Black Justice Fund.

Dr. Blackstock has received numerous awards and honors, including the American Medical Women’s Association’s 2021 Presidential Award, the 2021 Harvard Humanist of the Year, and the NAACP Brooklyn Chapter’s 2022 Valiant Service Award. Her writing, including numerous OpEds, has been featured in the Chicago Tribune, Scientific American, the Washington Post and New York Magazine. Dr. Blackstock received both her undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University, making her and her twin sister, Oni, the first Black mother-daughter legacies from Harvard Medical School. In June 2021, Dr. Blackstock signed a book deal with Penguin Random House Books for her generational memoir, LEGACY: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine. LEGACY was published on January 23, 2024, was an instant New York Times best seller and is currently available to order. Dr. Blackstock currently lives in her hometown of Brooklyn, New York, with her two school-age children.