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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley.

When physician Uche Blackstock was a medical student at Harvard, she had a near-death experience that gave

her a sobering outlook on the state of medical care in our country.

Suffering from excruciating stomach pain, Blackstock took herself to the ER, and after hours of waiting,

she was told she had a stomach bug and sent home.

But as the days went on, she felt worse, and it would take two more ER visits before she was diagnosed

with appendicitis and because it took so long for the diagnosis her appendix

ruptured requiring emergency surgery followed by a painful recovery that sent her back to the hospital.

This experience for Dr. Blackstock took her back to watching her mother, at 47 years years old die of leukemia.

Blackstock's mother was also a doctor,

and while she had access to quality health care,

Blackstock wonders whether her mother's childhood experiences with poverty and poor medical care,

coupled with stress as a black woman, may have contributed to her early death.

Dr. Uchee Blackstock explores systemic inequities in her new book,

Legacy, A Black Physician Reckons with Racism and Medicine.

Dr. Blackstock is the founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity.

She's held several titles at the New York University School of Medicine, serving as

former Associate Professor, an Emergency Physician, and former faculty director of recruitment retention and

inclusion in the Office of Diversity Affairs. Dr. Blackstock's twin sister

...