Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine

Uché Blackstock traces the systemic inequities within American healthcare through the lens of her own medical career and her mother’s history as a physician. Blackstock connects the legacy of the 1910 Flexner Report, which caused the closure of several Black medical schools, to the modern shortage of Black doctors and the resulting diagnostic biases. She details specific clinical outcomes, such as higher maternal mortality rates among Black women and the unequal distribution of medical resources during the COVID-19 pandemic, to illustrate how institutionalized exclusion leads to physical harm.

Readers interested in the intersection of public health and racial history find a data-driven look at why healthcare outcomes differ by demographic. This book serves medical students, healthcare administrators, and social historians who want to understand the mechanical link between policy decisions and patient mortality. The reader finishes the book with an understanding of how historical segregation persists in modern clinical settings and gains a framework for identifying structural barriers that prevent equitable treatment within hospitals and clinics.