In 2018, Dr. Oni Blackstock was appointed as an assistant commissioner for the New York City Department of Health, working in the Bureau of HIV. The following year, the New York Department of Health announced a 67% decline in HIV positive cases since 2001, largely due to the kind of public health interventions Dr. Blackstock had initiated and promoted. In April 2020, Dr. Blackstock and her twin sister, Dr. Uche Blackstock, were recognized by Mother Jones Magazine for their work "on the front lines of New York City’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic.” Dr. Oni Blackstock called SARS-CoV-2 a "pandemic of inequality.”
Both Dr. Blackstocks’ inspiration to pursue medicine was their mother, Dr. Dale Gloria Blackstock (Evans), a nephrologist who lost her battle to leukemia at 47. The Blackstocks attended Harvard University and then, following in their mother’s footsteps, her alma mater, Harvard Medical School.
An attending physician at Harlem Hospital Center, Dr. Oni Blackstock is also founder and executive director of Health Justice, which “supports health organizations to center equity in the workplace and reduce health inequities in the communities they serve.”
Dr. Blackstock sat down for a conversation with Regis College Associate Professor Dr. Lisa Fardy, a certified community and public health clinical nurse specialist, centered on inequities in healthcare.