Adam Kassam is a resident physician in the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at Western University. She attended medical school at the University of Toronto, where she was co-chair of the Black Medical Student Association and created several new initiatives, including a speaker series on black health, which provided students with an opportunity to learn from medical professionals about how race and health interact. We need them, because black bodies continue to be underestimated, undervalued and undertreated to a level equivalent to a public health crisis. Miriam Rossi worked at the University of Toronto School of Medicine for many years and, throughout that time, was a tireless advocate for equity, diversity and inclusion, especially for black students.
In Toronto, 47 percent of people identified the same way, with the three largest visible minority groups being South Asians, Chinese and blacks. Onye Nnorom and Ontario's black physicians tirelessly advocated for the collection of race-based COVID-19 data that would help adequately inform healthcare responses to the disease within the community. Cheryl Prescod, executive director of the Black Creek Community Health Center, advocated for better access to vaccines in areas of Toronto that were severely underserved, helping to establish vaccination clinics in those areas. He actively recruits young black medical students, volunteers in many of the black community's vaccine and testing programs, and is actively involved in promoting education in the black community.
Rahel Zewude's dedication to advocating for the black community in terms of representation in medicine and access to equitable healthcare is unparalleled. It has now established the Compassion Medical Wellness Center outside of Edmonton, to reach the black and immigrant populations that live there. According to research from the United States, there is no evidence that black patients seek more drugs or have a predisposition to become addicted to opioids. Modupe Tunde-Byass, physician, president of Black Physicians of Canada and assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Toronto.
It inspires me because she is a passionate and persistent advocate for Black health and demonstrates that it is possible to hold positions of power and use them for systemic change. She was a true pioneer and there is a direct line that connects her efforts to the fact that the University of Toronto medical school now has more black students than ever before. Black Physicians of Canada makes no warranty as to the completeness, reliability and accuracy of this information.
