Black Cardiologists
34 Black cardiologists listed nationwide, 0 offering telehealth. Every listing self-identified; 34 license-checked.
A cardiologist treats the heart and the blood vessels around it. That covers blood pressure that will not come down, chest pain, heart failure, irregular rhythms such as atrial fibrillation, valve problems, and life after a heart attack.
Most people arrive through a primary care doctor. Ask for the referral when blood pressure stays above target on two or more medicines, when you get short of breath doing something that used to be easy, when your ankles swell, when your heart races or skips in a way you can feel, or when you faint. Crushing chest pain, pain spreading into the jaw or arm, sudden shortness of breath, or weakness on one side is 911, not an appointment.
Bring readings from home. A week of blood pressure taken twice a day, sitting, on the same arm, written down, is worth more than a single number in a clinic. Bring every pill bottle. Bring what your parents and siblings were treated for, and at what age it started.
The evidence for concordant care
In 2022, Black Americans were 35 percent more likely than the US population overall to die from major diseases of the heart and blood vessels [1].
The pressure behind that number starts earlier in life. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute states that high blood pressure is more common in Black adults than in white, Hispanic or Asian adults, that Black people tend to have higher average blood pressure numbers and to develop high blood pressure earlier in life, and that some blood pressure medicines may not work as well for Black people [2]. That last clause is worth carrying into an appointment, because it turns a stalled reading from a personal failure into a prescribing question that belongs to the clinician.
What gets offered, and what gets accepted, has been measured directly. In a randomized study in Oakland, Black men were assigned either a Black doctor or a doctor of another race for a free screening. Both groups chose a similar set of services before meeting anyone. Afterwards, the men who had met a Black doctor were much more likely to accept every service offered, with the largest difference in the invasive ones, and the authors estimate that at scale the effect could narrow the Black and white gap in male cardiovascular deaths by about 19 percent [3].
Cardiology is where that arithmetic lands hardest, because almost everything it offers is either invasive or a long course of daily tablets, and both depend on believing the person who recommended them.
Sources, checked 21 Aug 2026
- HHS Office of Minority Health. Heart Disease and Black/African Americans. Fetched 21 Aug 2026.
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. High Blood Pressure: Causes and Risk Factors. Fetched 21 Aug 2026.
- American Economic Review (Alsan, Garrick and Graziani, 2019). Does Diversity Matter for Health? Experimental Evidence from Oakland. Fetched 21 Aug 2026.