Dr. Oni Blackstock: Learning from the HIV Epidemic How Community Can Check Public Health and Pharma

Hello, everyone.

Welcome to Octavia's Cure, a conversation series about reimagining healthcare and public health for all of us.

I'm Dr. Stella Sacco.

I'm an HIV primary care physician, a public health practitioner, and the founder of Just Equity for Health.

This series is inspired by the visionary spirit of author and futurist Octavia Butler, who believe that the future isn't something that just happens to us.

It's something that we build together, that we have an impact on, and that needs to be grounded in community and in truth.

Today's conversation is one that I've been looking forward to for a long time.

We are living in a moment where our public health infrastructure is under real pressure and attack and where trust in medicine is fragile or broken, especially for communities that have always been underserved.

Many of us are now asking, how do we not just survive this moment, but actually build something better? To answer this question, I think we have to look back at communities that have already done this work.

And HIV is one of them.

So HIV advocacy didn't just fight for the improvement of a disease.

It fought for dignity, for science, and the right to be seen.

And it won many, many battles.

It also lost some battles.

But most importantly, the movement has kept going.

My guest today has lived that fight from the inside as a clinician taking care of HIV patients in communities hardest hit by this epidemic.

And as an advocate moving policy and procedures forward that will treat and eventually end the HIV epidemic.

Welcome Dr. Oni Blackstock.

She is a primary care physician and an HIV doctor, as well as the former assistant commissioner for the New York Department of Health.

She's the founder of Health Justice, and she's one of the most powerful voices in this country on what it truly means to center equity in healthcare.

So please welcome Dr. Blackstock on Octavia's Cure.

Oni, I'm so glad that you are here.

I want to start off by having you talk a little bit about your career and kind of what got you to this point, because you have this really interesting background of academia, public health and advocacy that comes together.