Barriers Block Minority Progress In The Medical Profession.

The American medical profession is on a demographic collision course with an increasingly diverse nation, according to a report released by Community Catalyst. While racial and ethnic minority populations are growing at a rapid rate, the number of underrepresented minorities in medical school has remained stagnant. African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians account for 25 percent of the nation’s population, but only represent six percent of practicing physicians. The Color of Medicine: Strategies for Increasing Diversity in the U.S.

Physician Workforce, examines the medical education process and the barriers facing minorities trying to enter and complete medical school. It finds that in spite of decades of commitment to producing more minority doctors, medical schools and teaching hospitals have failed to correct how their selection and training processes unfairly prevent minorities from entering the medical profession. Since medical schools and teaching hospitals receive significant
public financial support, they should actively do more to help remedy this increasingly important health issue, the report finds.

“Lack of diversity in the medical profession is a problem that affects everyone,” said Robert Restuccia, Community Catalyst Executive Director. “Our medical education system should be selecting and training future doctors who can best meet the changing needs of our increasingly diverse nation. Instead minorities find they must overcome unnecessary barriers that persist at every step of the medical education process from pre-med to entering the ranks of medical school faculty. We need to remove those barriers and we can’t rely on those who control academic medicine to do that by themselves.”

The report findings buttress a recent Institute of Medicine study, “Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care.” The IOM found racial and ethnic minorities receive lower quality health care than whites often due to a subconscious racial bias of many physicians. IOM identified increasing the number of minority students in medical schools as a necessary strategy for combating these inequities.

The report, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, was released at a joint strategy meeting chaired by former Health and Human Services Secretary and president of the Morehouse School Of Medicine, Dr. Louis M. Sullivan. The meeting was sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Kaiser Family Foundation to explore ways to increase the number of underrepresented minorities attending medical school.

The Color of Medicine concludes that achieving greater diversity in the medical profession will require a multi-pronged approach from both inside and outside the medical community. Suggested recommendations include:

* Assemble a medical and community leadership group to eliminate barriers to the medical education process

* Conduct additional research on the relationship between diversity in the medical profession and improved health care access and quality, demonstrating a public health need that medical schools and teaching hospitals must address

* Explore the application of community benefit standards, similar to those already in place for non-profit hospitals, to ensure that medical education institutions address community health needs

* Condition receipt of government funds by medical schools and teaching hospitals on progress in increasing physician workforce diversity

* Involve civic leaders and community residents in efforts to increase physician diversity at local medical schools and teaching hospitals

* Improve and update criteria used to judge ability to be a good doctor, including the elimination of the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) as a required application element

* Improve pipe-line programs to address issues related to poor academic preparation for minorities before medical school

Copies of The Color of Medicine are available by visiting http://www.communitycatalyst.org .

Skip to content