You're sitting in a dermatologist's office, finally there after weeks on a waitlist and a referral you had to fight for.
You've described your symptoms. You've shown your skin. And the person across from you looks at you, shrugs, and says there's nothing more they can do.
That's not a worst-case scenario. For too many Black Canadians, that's just a Tuesday.
There are fewer than 10 Black dermatologists in all of Canada serving a Black population of roughly 1.5 million people. That gap doesn't just mean longer waits or fewer choices. It means Black patients are regularly seen by providers who were trained on textbooks that didn't include their skin, who misread their conditions, underestimate the urgency of their treatment, and sometimes leave them worse off than when they walked in.
Two people who know this firsthand asked to remain anonymous, but their stories are worth telling.
