A Brampton doctor has gone viral after sharing her journey on social media while opening up her new practice, striking a chord with thousands across the GTA who have never had a Black physician.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dr. Ashley Sebastian\u2019s\u00a0comment section on her TikTok videos\u00a0is proof of that appreciation, with hundreds and thousands of views and comments from people across the GTA excited for the representation that she brings to medicine, translating to real patients from far and wide.<\/p>\n
\u201cInitially, I didn\u2019t expect my videos to go as far as they did, but it\u2019s perceived really well by the community,\u201d Dr. Sebastian tells CityNews.<\/p>\n
According to the Canadian Medical Association, there is a disproportionately low number of Black physicians in Canada, with only 2.3 per cent of Ontario\u2019s doctors identifying as Black, although Black people make up about 4.7 per cent of the population.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very humbling to know they\u2019re putting their trust in me, driving hours to see me to feel seen and heard because I think that\u2019s a big issue in the Black community here in Toronto.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a 2025 survey of almost two thousand Black women and girls, conducted by the\u00a0Black Women\u2019s Institute for Health, about 67 per cent said they felt their concerns were \u201cdismissed or not taken seriously\u201d by a health-care provider. Meanwhile, about 42 per cent of respondents said they avoided seeking health care because of concerns of how they would be treated as a Black woman.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of discrimination within the medical profession that we don\u2019t want to accept, but it does exist,\u201d said Dr. Anthony Sebastian, Ashley\u2019s father, who has been practicing medicine for over 30 years. \u201cOne thing is access, and cultural relevance as well, which I think is extremely important in medicine. It\u2019s not about diagnosing disease alone, but understanding the social conditions that most people live.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both doctors agree success begins with the education system, saying that by exposing\u00a0Black youth to STEM-related careers, there is potential for more Black people to have a future in science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Brampton doctor has gone viral after sharing her journey on social media while opening up her new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194339],"tags":[51759,49,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-505722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brampton","8":"tag-brampton","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}