Dear Black girl in medicine,

We need you

We need you to change the statistic

We need you to change the narrative

2% is not enough

We need you to apply

We need you to study

We need you to persevere

We need you to finish

We need more of YOU in medicine

I don’t care what your advisor said. I don’t care if you failed an exam. I don’t care who told you, you couldn’t do it. I don’t care who told you to chase another dream.

We need you for women like Kira Johnson who died after a routine C section.

We need you for Dr. Chaneice Wallace, a pediatric chief resident who died after childbirth.

We need you for Dr. Susan Moore who should not have been discharged from the hospital
prematurely and later died

We need you because patients are more likely to trust doctors who look like them and there is already mistrust between the Black community and healthcare

We need you so you can pave the way for others

We need you so our Black mothers will
stop dying at alarming rates

We need YOU

When you are tired of studying and when you are overwhelmed and when you want to give up I want you to think of every patient whose life you will make a difference in.

Use that as your fuel and keep going.

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.”

• Martin Luther King. Jr