Standing on her Shoulders: Celebrating Meta L. Christy, DO, and African American Alumnae Trailblazers
Medical Student Site Director, Fort Belvoir Community Hospital; Assistant Professor, Family Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland
“I was over twenty years old before I saw my first Black female physician. I often
call myself a statistical anomaly. … When I think of my parents—where they came from,
what was offered to them—I could not have predicted my presence as a faculty member
at a medical school, teaching residents, doing family medicine. I certainly believe
in divine intervention and that medicine and teaching is my calling, but it’s grounded
with grit, hard work, dedication, and allyship. … In Army JROTC, my instructor was
a retired colonel. I had decided I wanted to be an EMT—the job would pay the bills.
But he pushed me. He said, ‘That’s not enough. You need to strive higher. You have
more potential.’ And that conversation and the time he spent with me, that changed
my trajectory. … I decided to attend Florida A&M University, an HBCU, and was awarded
an Army ROTC Scholarship. This was the only time in my life I was a majority. HBCUs’
existence is pivotal to the development of Black professionals. … At PCOM, a mentor
to most of us was Leonard Johnson [DO ’64], also a graduate of Florida A&M. He held
our feet to the fire; he expected greatness. … You’re taught as a Black person that
the system is the system. You’re always going to have to work twice as hard to get
half the credit—doesn’t matter whether you’re tired, whether your intrinsic worth
or value feels diminished. I experienced a fair amount of burnout when it came to
leadership in clinical roles. … Microaggressions and macroaggressions are stress mediators.
When you get stressed, the cortisol level rises, and can affect your behaviors and
performance. Underrepresented minorities [URM] experience chronic micro- and macroaggressions;
they may never return to baseline. I agree with the thesis that this allostatic load
leads to physician burnout for URM. The increased allostatic load can look like empathy
fatigue, diminished educational or professional performance, etc. … Race can be the
elephant in the room. ‘I don’t see race’ to me means you don’t see me. And we can’t
have a conversation about it. … Most recently my work has addressed underrepresentation
in medicine, through cross-cultural mentorship. How do you mentor someone? How do
you have conversations that feel uncomfortable? It’s really evaluating yourself and
saying, ‘What are the things in my life that shaped my opinions, my beliefs, my behaviors?’
This is what’s called a cultural autobiography. When you have these conversations
in a nonthreatening environment, all these things start to open up. … I’m a unicorn,
but also I’m a beacon, so someone else doesn’t have to wait until they’re twenty to
see a doctor who looks like them.”
as told to Janice Fisher
Read more stories from African American female physicians, leaders and health professionals.
Digest, the magazine for alumni and friends of Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, is published by the Office of Marketing and Communications. The magazine reports on osteopathic and other professional trends of interest to alumni of the College’s Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) and graduate programs at PCOM, PCOM Georgia and PCOM South Georgia.
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