Esther K. Choo

Esther Choo is an emergency physician and associate professor at the Oregon Health & Science University. She is a popular science communicator who has used social media to talk about racism and sexism in healthcare. She was the president of the Academy of Women in Academic Emergency Medicine and is a member of the American Association of Women Emergency Physicians.

Early life

Choo grew up in Cleveland. Her parents emigrated from Korea in the 1960s. She graduated in 1994 with a degree in English from Yale College. She was an intern at The Plain Dealer, a newspaper in Cleveland. She earned a medical degree at Yale University in 2001. She was a resident at Boston Medical Center. In 2009 she returned for further training, earning a Master's in Public Health at Oregon Health & Science University.

Career

Choo completed her emergency medicine residency at Boston Medical Center, did a health services research fellowship at Oregon Health & Science University, and later became an associate professor at the Alpert Medical School. She won the 2012 Outstanding Physician Award from the University Emergency Medicine Foundation, the SAEM Young Investigator Award, and the OHSU Emerging Leader Award Since 2016 she has been an Associate Professor at Oregon Health & Science University Hospital. Her research interests include developing effective interventions for women who experience partner violence and substance misuse. In 2018 she was the co-founder of Equity Quotient, a start-up which monitors and addresses equity culture in healthcare organizations.

Advocacy

She is an advocate for more multiculturalism and diversity in medicine, often praising women's doctors. She has written for the blog FemInEM, a resource for women in emergency medicine. Choo was President of the Academy for Women in Academic Emergency Medicine. She was a leader of the Division of Women's Health in Emergency Care at Alpert Medical School, and is President of the non-profit Gender Equity Research Group.

She started a conversation about racism in medicine on Twitter after the August 12 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

@choo_ek: 1/ We've got a lot of white nationalists in Oregon. So a few times a year, a patient in the ER refuses treatment from me because of my race.

The tweet was shared by 25,000 people, including Chelsea Clinton. She appeared on CNN and other news channels. Choo has written for HuffPost NBC THINK, and Self magazine. She started a second viral tweet series in July 2018, when she asked "I'm going to write a book called, "Is It Gender Bias, Or Do I Just Suck?" Preview in the posts, below.".