Ezekiel Aaron Richardson (University of Pennsylvania, 2019) is an emergency medicine physician resident in the city of Chicago, where he works with multiple organizations to prolong the lives of residents of underserved communities through medical care, organizing, and activism. He works as a medical liaison for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, the Chicago community liaison for the national board of White Coats for Black Lives, a national physician activist organization opposing systemic racism, and the sitting physician representative on Chicago’s Community Health Equity Coalition, a group of activists and community leaders that organize for community representation in healthcare.
In these roles, Ezekiel works to bring community concerns and issues, like the recent attempted closure of the historic Mercy Hospital on Chicago’s South Side, to the attention of medical students and physicians to promote advocacy and responsiveness to the needs of the communities they serve. Ezekiel also works as a clinical educator within Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s emergency department, where he promotes adapting physician professional identity formation toward antiracist and activist frameworks to better serve communities struggling against systemic racism. He has organized residents across multiple hospital systems within Chicago and has been a staunch advocate for the provision of reliable, quality healthcare for those who would be denied as a result of American systemic racism.
