Dr. Uché Blackstock is the founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity and 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. Uché 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. Uché grew up in Crown Heights alongside her fraternal twin sister. Their mother, Dale Gloria Blackstock, studied medicine at Harvard and was the first member of her family to attend college. She specialized in nephrology and served as president of an organization for Brooklyn's black women doctors. Uché 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 before attending undergrad and medical school at Harvard, following in their mother's footsteps into medicine. During Uché 's sophomore year, her mother fell ill with leukemia and died. When Uche and her sister graduated from Harvard Medical School they became the first Black mother-daughter legacy. Uché was appointed as an assistant professor at the NYU School of Medicine where she held a simultaneous position as an emergency physician. Fewer than two percent of American physicians were Black women. In 2012, she was named Ultrasound Content Director at the university where she developed and implemented a longitudinal point-of-care ultrasound curriculum for medical students. In 2017, Uché was named the Faculty Director for Recruitment, Retention, and Inclusion in the Office of Diversity Affairs at NYU where she was responsible for developing and implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives for Black, Latino, and Indigenous faculty. Uché left NYU in 2019 due to the inhospitable environment for Black trainees and faculty. She has called for academic medical centers to better appreciate and rectify the impact of racism in healthcare. In 2024 Uché promoted her book “Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine”, which explores systemic inequity in health care, tracing its origins back to the beginnings of Western medicine and to her own experiences as a medical student and doctor.

click here