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
