race in Medicine

new book. new chapter.

In September 2025, my second book, NEGLIGENT BY DESIGN: Anti-Blackness in American Medicine and How to Address It, was released.

On January 30, 2026, I closed another chapter.

I stepped down as Director of Adult Medicine at Baywell Health to focus fully on Black Doc Village, the nonprofit I founded nearly four years ago.

Leaving was not easy. I meant every word I wrote in The Gift I Didn’t Realize I Needed. Baywell Health was that gift.

This is the first time I have ever left a place where I felt I could be my full self. Where I had real agency. Where my ideas — even the disruptive ones — were taken seriously, supported, even embraced. I will always be a cheerleader for Baywell Health.

But years ago, a mentor told me: aspire to your highest and best use.

At Baywell, there were deadlines, metrics, meetings — urgencies created by the organization. Important work. Necessary work.

Now? I set the urgency.

The discipline must come from within, alongside the very real pressure of fundraising to keep myself and my team salaried.

And here is what made this moment clear:

Black Doc Village has raised significant philanthropic support from the California Health Care Foundation, The California Wellness Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and The Commonwealth Fund.

We have completed our first national study, which resulted in two manuscripts that are currently under peer review. We have two more studies underway and plans for future work.

The work is not hypothetical. It is happening.

That traction told me it was time.

The truth is this: someone else with my same commitment and intellect can see patients and direct Adult Medicine. I spent the last several months ensuring a smooth passing of the baton to Dr. Monique Hedmann. Recruiting her to Baywell was a highlight of my tenure.

But nobody else can lead Black Doc Village right now.

(If someone thinks they can, let me know as I’m going to need a successor someday (unless of course I solve all the problems in my lifetime — jokes).

A colleague recently reassured me that I had “no doubt contributed” to California’s last remaining predominantly Black-serving federally qualified health center. I know this.

I also know that the receptivity to my leadership has varied across institutions, often in ways that say more about them than about me.

It is a privilege to take this leap. Not everyone can leave a leadership role and a steady paycheck. I do so with the steady support of my husband, Robert Phillips, and deep awareness that autonomy is not evenly distributed.

So here we are.

All my intellectual energy. All my plans for disruption. Focused on Black Doc Village.

If you believe medicine can do better — structurally, not symbolically — I invite you to:

• Book me to speak
• Fund Black Doc Village
• Follow our work

The book was not the culmination.

It was the preface.

 

 

what I'm doing about Black doctors being pushed out of medicine

I’ve written about my reasons for leaving UCSF. And while it was painful to feel unsupported, isolated, undervalued, and gaslighted—including by Black leadership within the institution—I was already a published author, recipient of multiple coveted grants and fellowships, and double board-certified in nephrology and internal medicine. I’ve since learned that my story pales in comparison to so many other young Black physicians who are being disproportionately pushed out of medicine at a time in their career when they have no license to practice independently but do have $240,000 of debt on average after completing medical school. Only 5% of physicians in training in the US are Black, but account for 20% of program dismissals. And this doesn’t even count those who are convinced to resign to avoid the damaging mark of dismissal on their record.

,

my final straw

,

“My pending exodus from academic medicine after 15 years…” This is how I started my piece recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine. I wrote my thoughts on what academia needs to do to right the wrongs that centuries of racism and anti-Blackness have created, but not on the experience that served as my final straw. A story in the news since then makes me want to share it now…

"angry black woman" is the new n*gger

Scrolling through Twitter today, I came across the headline “Democratic commentator Hilary Rosen comes under fire for telling Nina Turner she misunderstood MLK’s words.” The headline was trending, so I was clearly not the only one intrigued. Digging deeper, I found a video in which Hilary Rosen, a White woman and Democratic political strategist, attempted to shout down Nina Turner, a Black woman and national co-chair for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, on a segment of CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time in defense of the Biden campaign.

Understandably, there was a “Oh hell no, no she didn’t” moment. But when Hilary Rosen tweeted, “I’m horrified that anyone would think I would call Nina Turner “an angry black woman” I would NEVER!! After the TV hit last night, I was getting tons of ugly messages to keep fighting her using that phrase,” it was then that I Oprah knew for sure that “angry Black woman” was the new nigger. A label meant to incite outrage. A label meant to put the offender on the defensive.