Dr. Vanessa Grubbs is a double board-certified nephrologist and internist, published author, activist, and kidney donor. She is currently director of adult medicine at Baywell Health, the only predominantly Black community-serving federally qualified health center in California. She is also the founder & president of Black Doc Village, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to addressing the disproportionate dismissal of Black resident physicians through research and policy change. Her first book, HUNDREDS OF INTERLACED FINGERS: A Kidney Doctor’s Search for the Perfect Match (Amistad, 2017), tells her story of becoming a kidney donor, then nephrologist, and her experiences with ethical and controversial topics in nephrology. Black feminist scholar, author and activist, Angela Davis, describes Dr. Grubbs’ latest book, NEGLIGENT BY DESIGN: Anti-Blackness in American Medicine and How to Address It (North Atlantic Books, 2025), as “a major contribution to continuing efforts to acknowledge and rectify medical racism in its many forms.”

TOPICS: Race, Health