Podcast
Dr. Chris Pernell MD Navigating HealthCare Inequities
Dr. Chris Pernell is a public health physician and the Director of the NAACP Center for Health Equity. She works on health justice, community advocacy, and preventing disease across whole populations. She earned her bachelor’s degree cum laude from Princeton University, her MD from Duke University School of Medicine, and her MPH from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She completed her residency in General Preventive Medicine at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Before joining the NAACP, Dr. Pernell was the first Chief Strategic Integration and Health Equity Officer at University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey. She also founded The Esther Group, a firm that advises on public health and health equity strategy. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and a Fellow and Regent-at-Large of the American College of Preventive Medicine. She also serves on the health equity committee of the New Jersey Reparations Council.
Her honors include the New Jersey Public Health Association’s Dr. Ezra Mundy Hunt Award and the American College of Preventive Medicine’s Ron Davis Special Recognition Award. The NAACP New Jersey State Conference also named her one of its “100 Black People Who Changed the World.” She is a frequent media voice on public health and health equity.
In this episode, Dr. Judith and Dr. Pernell discuss:
- Racial inequity in medicine and how it shows up in patient care
- Why Black patients’ pain and symptoms are still too often dismissed
- How academic medicine recruits Black physicians, then pushes them out
- Mentorship, promotion, and who gets told they “don’t belong”
- The emotional toll of racism on Black healthcare workers
- What health justice could look like, and the NAACP’s role in getting there
- Natigating High Functioning Depression as a Black professional
Connect with Dr. Chris Pernell:
Dr. Chris Pernell’s Website
Dr. Chris Pernell’s Instagram
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Disclaimer: Consider your individual mental health needs with a licensed medical professional. This content is not medical advice.
