[ad_1]
There aren’t a lot of black doctors in the U.S., but Patricia and Stephanie Egwuatu, who are from Auburn, are hoping to change that.
SEATTLE — Two sisters from Auburn hope to galvanize the next generation of doctors and boost diversity in medicine.
“We want to inspire people to go into medicine that look like us,” said Stephanie Egwuatu, a family medicine resident physician.
In 2018, 56.2% of all U.S. doctors were white and 17.1% were Asian. Just 5% of American doctors were Black, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Patricia and Stephanie Egwuatu grew up hearing stories about the Ugandan and Nigerian villages where their parents were born and how people had to walk to get health care or died after getting sick. Stories like this made Patricia Egwuatu realize that health care is a privilege.
It also made them want to become the doctors they wanted to see growing up.
“We didn’t have physicians that looked like us, and so often we would go into the room and feel uncomfortable,” said Patricia Egwuatu, a family medicine physician at Kaiser Permanente.
Black doctors have been rare in the United States for centuries. Dr. James McCune Smith was the first Black American to get a medical degree in 1837, and Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler was the first Black woman in America to earn a medical degree in 1864.
More than a century later, American medicine has not made much progress. A 2021 study from the University of California, Los Angeles found that the number of Black physicians has only increased by 4% in the last 120 years.
The Egwuatu sisters have inspired others through activism documented on social media, including marching for Black Lives Matter. That inspiration extended to twins who got emotional while seeing Patricia Egwuatu demonstrating in her scrubs and white doctor’s coat.
“They started crying,” Patricia Egwuatu. “And they were like, ‘Patricia!’ – and I don’t want to cry – ‘You are the reason we are doing what we are doing today, and to see you where you are at is amazing.’”
[ad_2]
Source link
