Discussions

Family medicine is in a state of crisis, exacerbated by the pandemic which, eight months in, has totally disrupted primary care physicians’ ability to provide face-to-face, quality care. Things are so bad that while governments are urging everyone to get a flu shot to avoid a “twindemic” many have expressed their confusion about finding out where to get that shot, just days away from the time when people typically start getting them.

The goal here is not to admonish Canada’s most revered medical organizations, but rather to illustrate the historic and longstanding dearth of Black representation in Canadian medical leadership. Over the past few years, calls to address barriers to achieving diversity in the Canadian health workforce have been gaining momentum. Diversity exists along a broad spectrum that includes gender, socioeconomic, linguistic, and racial subsets, to mention a few. Acknowledging that there exist many populations that are also underrepresented in the highest echelons of Canadian medical leadership, this article speaks specifically to the paucity of Black Canadians in formal physician leadership roles while proposing four key recommendations for addressing this diversity gap.