Radio Diary: A Doctor's Mission To End COVID-19 Racial Health Inequities

This radio diary is part of our hour with former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher about health equity. Listen here.  

At the start of the pandemic, Dr. Ala Stanford started hearing from her Black friends that they were not able to get coronavirus tests. Dr. Stanford, a pediatric surgeon in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has dedicated her career to eliminating racial health disparities. So she decided to act.

She contacted fellow physicians and collected COVID tests that weren’t being used. She then rented a van, and went out into the community. And thus, the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium was born. Listen above to hear more about how Dr. Stanford is tackling racial health inequity amid the pandemic.

In this diary … we hear from:

Dr. Ala Stanford, founder of the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium. She is now the “physician of record” for over 15,000 coronavirus tests in Philadelphia.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org. [Copyright 2020 NPR]