take care of them like my own: faith, fortitude, and a surgeon’s fight for health justice

The founder of the Black Doctors Consortium highlights the devastating racial injustices in our healthcare system in this inspirational memoir and empowering call to action.

Dr. Ala Stanford knew she wanted to be a doctor by the time she was eight years old. But role models were few and far between in her working-class North Philly neighborhood. Her teachers were dismissive, and the realities of racism, sexism, and poverty threatened to derail her at every turn. Nevertheless, thanks to her faith, family, and the sheer strength of her will, today she is one of the vanishingly small number of Black women surgeons in America--and an unrelenting force in the fight for health justice.

In Take Care of Them Like My Own, Dr. Stanford shares an unflinching account of her story, explaining how her experiences on both sides of the scalpel have informed her understanding of America’s racial health gap, an insidious and lethal form of inequality that exacts a devastating toll on Black communities across the country, affluent and underserved alike.

When Covid-19 arrived in her hometown of Philadelphia, she knew it would disproportionately affect the Black population. As the city stood idly by, unwilling or unable to protect its most vulnerable citizens, Dr. Stanford took matters into her own hands. She rented a van, made some calls, and began administering tests in church parking lots. Soon, she found herself at the helm of a powerful grassroots campaign that successfully vaccinated tens of thousands of Philadelphians. She and her movement are living proof that by drawing on faith, community, and inner strength, everyday people can affect tremendous change.

Part memoir, part manifesto for health equality and justice, Take Care of Them Like My Own offers urgent lessons about the power of communities working together to take care of one another and the importance of fighting for a healthcare system that truly fulfills its promise to all Americans.

Dr. Ala Stanford is founder of the Black Doctors Consortium, a national leader in health equity, a health care policy advisor, and former regional director of the US Department of Health and Human Services of the mid-Atlantic appointed by President Biden. In May 2024 she was appointed Professor of Practice in Biology at the University of Pennsylvania with two additional appointments in the Perelman School of Medicine and Annenberg School for Communication. A practicing physician for over twenty years and founder of R.E.A.L. Concierge Medicine, Dr. Stanford is board-certified by the American Board of Surgery in both pediatric and adult general surgery and serves as a medical and health correspondent for national media outlets. Dr. Stanford gained international recognition during the COVID-19 pandemic for using the infrastructure of her pediatric surgery practice to create a grassroots organization focused on education, testing, contact tracing, and vaccination in communities lacking access to care and resources. She and her team provided direct care for hundreds of thousands, and countless others nationwide through her organization’s messaging. She subsequently opened a multidisciplinary ambulatory care center bearing her name in a neighborhood in Philadelphia with one of the lowest life expectancies in the city.

Dr. Stanford has received many awards and honors, including recognition as a Top 10 CNN Hero, one of Fortune Magazine’s ＂World’s 50 Greatest Leaders,＂ and one of Forbes’s Most Influential Women. She has also received the American College of Surgeons 2023 Domestic Surgical Volunteerism Award and the George H.W. Bush Points of Light Award. She was selected as 2024 Distinguished Alumni from The Pennsylvania State University, and the City of Philadelphia commissioned a street in her name. She lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia with her husband and children.