blackstock: yes.john: but you also write about things that are taught in medical school as fact that date back to the 19th century or to jim crow. talk about some of those. dr. blackstock: yeah, i talk about this idea that, whether explicitly or implicitly, in medical school, we're taught this idea that our patients who are black are biologically different. so, for example, there's something that is called the race correction factor that is associated with assessing or measuring kidney function. and for a very long time, up until very recently, there was a different set of normal values for black patients and non-black patients. and that was based on this myth, this idea that black people had higher muscle mass, which somehow translated into a different set of normal values for kidney function. but anyway, what that has led to is black people being deferred or having delayed specialty care for their kidneys or not placed on transplant lists. so these ideas that are deeply rooted, that we are taught in

blackstock, it's so good to see you.rt memoir, part call to action, for medical professionals. i want to focus first on your personal experiences. you had a harrowing misdiagnosis when you are in a medical school, you wrote about it in your book. tell us about it. >> well, when i was in medical school, i actually had appendicitis as a first year medical student. and i had to go to the e. r. three times, and i eventually had a condition which required urgent surgery and long term complications from that. i missed about a month of medical school. and all during that time, i was being questioned about the different aspects of my story. i was not believed. my medical history. and it's something that's actually common among black patients overall that when we, especially black women, when we go to health care, were often dismissed, or ignored, or our concerns are minimized. >> i have experienced that myself. i cannot imagine, i cannot imagine that experience you had, the appendicitis, oh my goodness. perhaps that's why you sa

blackstock, candy case the next question. >> doctor, thank you for reading the book.legacy to have three doctors in one family, that's remarkable, especially when there are so few black female doctors in the country. talk a little bit about how -- you look into the history of the medical system, how there were no opportunities for black people to learn medicine, because there were no schools that admitted black people. the legacy that impacts the kinds of data that you just spoken about, and the disparities between health care for black and white people still in the country. >> thank you so much for asking that question, because we look at today and say why are there so few black doctors? and that's because of reports and policies like the flex report in 1910, that led to the closure of historically black medical schools. five out of seven medical schools that would have trained between 25 and 35,000 black doctors, and so we think about this recent scotus decision on race conscious admissions and how that could have a similar impact on the diversity of our health care

blackstock joins us now, she is also an emergency medical physician and founder and chief executive ofviewers. congratulations on the book. tell us a little bit if you will about some of these personal experiences that motivated you congratulations on the book. tell us a little bit about some of these personal experiences that motivated you to explore this topic and then write this book. >> thank you so much for having me. i think what's important to note is i am a second generation black woman physician, and to say that is incredibly rare. less than 3% of all physicians are black women. so i'm in a sense a unicorn but that is because of systemic barriers that exist. i share some personal experience, losing my mother by the age of 47 to a blood cancer that is very rare and think about how the impact of racism could have shortened her life. i also had my own experiences with appendicitis that went misdiagnosed after three er visits that led to a perforated appendix, as a medical student leading me to miss a month of medical school. a lot of personal experiences you used to talk about th