About the Author

“The History Behind America’s Devastating Shortage of Black Doctors,” by Margaret “Meg” Vigil-Fowler, PhD, was published in Time in November 2023.

Author bio:

Margaret “Meg” Vigil-Fowler, PhD, is one of the foremost experts on the history of Black physicians. She received her doctorate in the history of medicine from the University of California, San Francisco, one of the top programs in the country. There she wrote an award-winning dissertation on the African American women who earned medical degrees before the Second World War. Vigil-Fowler received a Gloeckner Fellowship to conduct her research using rarely seen archival sources. Her writing won the American Association for the History of Medicine’s Shryock Medal, the most prestigious prize for a graduate student in the history of medicine. Her dissertation was a finalist for the Allan Nevins Prize for the Best Dissertation in American History. 

Vigil-Fowler taught undergraduate students in the history of medicine at the University of California, Berkeley, and works as a research associate studying gender, race, and workplace dynamics in medicine with Harvard University Medical School professor Sukumar Desai. She has published two significant journal articles on the history of Black women physicians, and has been interviewed about the history of Black women in medicine for the BBC’s “Missed Genius” column and on the Lost Women of Science podcast. As a 2021 National Academy of Education and Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, she completed research on the history of Black women medical students at Howard University Medical School and Meharry Medical College. 

Vigil-Fowler lives with her husband and two children in Colorado. She is writing her first book, a 150-year history of Black Americans in medicine.