By Valerie Montgomery Rice, JAMA, January 5, 2021
The disproportionate effect of the novel coronavirus on African Americans and communities of color has shone a new light on the more than century-old struggle to increase the number of Black physicians in the US. Today, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), Black physicians account for 5% of all physicians even though African Americans comprise 13% of the US population. Only 1626 (7.4%) of the 21 863 students who entered medical school in 2019 were Black, roughly the same ratio as the last 15 years.1
The US has failed to adequately increase the number of Black physicians since the turn of the 20th century, when 10 medical schools in the country were training Black physicians. As a result of the Flexner Report of 1910, many medical schools at that time were shut down, including all of the Black medical schools except for 2, Howard University College of Medicine, the only historically Black undergraduate college and university (HBCU) with a medical school, and Meharry Medical College. These schools, along with the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, founded in 1966, and Morehouse School of Medicine, founded in 1975, comprise the country’s only historically Black medical schools.
The Flexner Report asserted that the Black medical schools, as well as many others, operating at the time of his evaluation had inferior facilities, access to limited funding, and were “in no position to make any contribution of value.” The report prescribed a limited role for Black physicians in their practices and hinted that Black physicians possessed less potential and ability than White physicians. This bigotry of low expectations set a trajectory for Black medical schools, and ultimately the recruitment, education, and retention of Black physicians, from which medical education has yet to recover.
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