“Growing up, I thought most physicians were Black women because of my mom and the fact that she led a local organization of Black women physicians here in Brooklyn. She would have my sister and I come to those meetings with her. We were always around women who looked like my mom, who were also physicians, who were doing incredible work in our community. In my head, I was like, ‘I want to be just like these women.’ It wasn't until I got older that I realized there are less than 3% Black women of all physicians. We actually are a rarity. It was kind of a shock to recognize because I had all of these women to look to as role models. Having them as role models allowed me to dream big and to recognize that I could accomplish maybe what other people have doubts about accomplishing. 

“My mom in particular also had wonderful relationships with her patients. She saw them as whole human beings. And so when she was interacting with them, she wouldn't just ask them about their medical problems. She would ask them about how their family is doing. ‘How's that friend you mentioned?’ ‘What's going on at work?’ Our current healthcare system really doesn't allow physicians to interact with patients in that way, to see them holistically and recognize that when you're in the room with your patient, it's not just you and your patient. It's you, your patient, their family, their friends, whatever's happening at their job, whatever's happening in their communities, because we know now all of that impacts how healthy someone is. My mother was that early role model to hammer in that message to me.”

“I've always been a purpose-driven person. In everything that I do, I never viewed work as just work. I always have wanted to get something out of it and to give something to others. In my trajectory over the last few years, I was in academic medicine and recognized that I wasn't able to do the work that I wanted to do authentically. I realized that I was in misalignment and that if I wanted to fulfill my purpose, vision, and values, I had to create another environment. So I founded my organization, Advancing Health Equity, which is a health equity consulting firm to address racial health inequities. I had to take that leap of faith because I knew my purpose.”

“It was when I made that transition from academic medicine to working on my company. That happened, of course, in early 2020 when the pandemic revealed all of these deep fissures in all of our systems, but especially our healthcare system. I was working in urgent care at the time and I started writing about what I was seeing. I thought it was really important to give voice to what I was witnessing and to make sure that everyone was witness [to the health inequity of the COVID-19 pandemic].”

“This is the book that I wish I could have read before I went to medical school. And it's the book that I hope a lot of pre-med or medical students get to read because a lot of what I write about are things that I didn't learn. Some of the historical pieces, the social commentary that I didn't learn about in my medical education or my training that I had to learn about as a practicing physician. I felt like there were huge gaps in my knowledge. 

“One thing that's important that I want current and future physicians to understand is that when we see illness and disease in our patients, it's not just necessarily because they made poor choices. It is because of other factors that we call the ‘social determinants of health’. It's because of where they live. It's because of the quality of education or the kind of job that they have. I want us to have a better idea of how we think about our patients in a more holistic way as opposed to just saying, ‘You need to eat better, you need to drink less alcohol, and here's a prescription.’ I want us to view—like my mother did—our patients as whole human beings and that's how we can best serve them.”