Uché Blackstock

In July 2010, Blackstock was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the New York University School of Medicine, where she held a simultaneous position as an emergency physician.[13] At the time, fewer than two percent of American physicians were black women.[9] Soon thereafter, in 2012, she was named Ultrasound Content Director at the university. In this role, Blackstock developed and implemented a longitudinal point-of-care ultrasound curriculum for medical students. In October 2017, Blackstock was named the Faculty Director for Recruitment, Retention and Inclusion in the Office of Diversity Affairs at New York University School of Medicine, where she was responsible for developing and implementing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for Black, Latinx, and Indigenous faculty at the university.[10] Blackstock left NYU School of Medicine in 2019 due to the inhospitable environment for Black trainees and faculty. She wrote an op-ed to further detail in January 2020.[14] Her main reasons included a toxic work environment, sexism, racism and denial of promotion.[14] She has called for academic medical centers to better appreciate and rectify the impact of racism in healthcare.[14][15] The move offered her a chance to further focus on her recently founded organization, Advancing Health Equity.[10]

Blackstock has worked to bring attention to racism in healthcare since early in her career.[16][17][18][19] Her Mother's life challenges and death, along with the racial health inequities that Blackstock witnessed as a physician, were the inspiration to start her own organization.[20] In March 2018, Blackstock established Advancing Health Equity, an organization focused on partnering with healthcare and related organizations to address racial health inequities.[15][20][21] She believes that a diverse workforce, and one where everyone feels valued and respected, is essential for quality patient care.[9] As part of the organization, Blackstock facilitates trainings with healthcare organizations in unconscious bias, structural racism, and health equity and also provides consulting services to support organizations in achieving their health equity goals.[9][5] Her organization has worked with numerous academic medical centers, healthcare systems and health technology start-up companies. Previous clients include Salesforce, Northwestern Lurie Children's Hospital, and Partners HealthCare System.[20] In 2019, Blackstock was selected by Forbes as one of ten diversity and inclusion trailblazers you need to get familiar with.[22]

Blackstock currently works part-time at several urgent care centers in Brooklyn. The centers usually deal with minor conditions, but during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Blackstock noticed that patients were presenting with the symptoms of coronavirus disease.[23] She used social media to describe the challenges that she had getting testing for her patients, especially "when celebrities are getting tested with ease and quick turnaround times".[24] She became overly concerned about how the coronavirus pandemic would affect black patients.[25] In an interview with Slate, Blackstock remarked, "When I heard about doctors in Italy having to ration ventilators and then the incredibly likely possibility that that is going to happen here, my first thought was so many Black people are going to die."[25] She was one of the first to sound the alarm about potential racial health inequities that would be exposed and amplified by the pandemic, and what federal, state and local officials needed to do to mitigate the virus' spread among the country's most vulnerable populations.[25] Throughout the crisis, Blackstock has appeared consistently on podcasts, radio, digital and network news committed to conveying responsibly and accurate information about the COVID-19 pandemic. In June 2020, due to her media appearances and reputation, Blackstock was asked by Yahoo! News to be a Medical Contributor for the network.[26]