About the Episode

As an obesity medicine specialist, Fatima Cody Stanford, MD, MPH, MPA, understands the implicit and explicit biases that her patients deal with daily. As a black female doctor, she’s also familiar with the biases she faces each day. But it was one particular day on a recent Delta flight that she will never forget. The power of both implicit and explicit bias was readily apparent when flight attendants questioned her credentials as a doctor as she provided care to a fellow passenger who was having a panic attack. In this episode, Dr. Stanford discusses this experience, how going viral affects her practice and the importance of both speaking out against biases and promoting diversity in medicine.

About the Guest

Fatima Cody Stanford, MD, MPH, MPA, FAAP, FACP, FTOS, is an obesity physician at Mass General’s Weight Center. Aside from her clinical and research work, she writes for and has been featured in national news broadcasts, magazines, newspapers and websites on issues related to weight and the complexities of obesity.

Dr. Stanford is advocacy co-chair of the Obesity Society and a member of the Diversity and Inclusion Board of the Department of Medicine at Mass General.

She is the 2017 recipient of the Harvard Medical School Amos Diversity Award and the Massachusetts Medical Society Award for Women’s Health. Upon the completion of her MPH in 2005, she received the Gold Congressional Award, the highest honor that Congress bestows upon America’s youth.

Dr. Stanford earned her BS and MPH at Emory University as an MLK Scholar. She earned her MD at the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine. She holds an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government where she was a Zuckerman Fellow in the Harvard Center for Public Leadership.

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