Women of color have always been essential to our healthcare system. It shouldn't take a pandemic to see our value.

For myself and many other women of color, it didn't take a pandemic to realize how essential we are to healthcare.

Long before March 1st, when the first COVID-19 case was confirmed here in my home state of New York, I already knew that physicians were essential and valuable, although many of us are not treated that way.

In particular, Black women have been critical to medicine women who continue to do the additional work of not only caring for the well and sick, but also advocating both on an individual and community-level for communities that are marginalized and often disenfranchised. We not only provide the care as physicians, nut as nurses and as the home, health aides, pharmacists, and nursing home workers who are keeping our system afloat.

As we near 2 months of this tragic situation, many of us are tired. We are tired of seeing the same story play out of black and brown communities continuing to face injustice in healthcare and in life, in general. As the founder of an empowerment group for Black women physicians, I can easily say that we are tired- tired of this injustice not being in the forefront and only a priority for few health institutions and largely due to Black women.