WASHINGTON—Concerned with the disparities in the medical field, experts and university administrators gathered in the nation’s capital this week to strategize on solutions.
The two-day National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine workshop titled, “The Growing Absence of Black Men in Medicine and Science: An American Crisis,” convened on Monday and Tuesday to address low Black male enrollment in American medical schools.
“Hopefully we can come up with things that are brave and bold,” said Dr. Cato T. Laurencin, a distinguished professor at the University of Connecticut and chair of the planning committee for the workshop.
Attendees included faculty and university administrators as well as personnel from nonprofits and accrediting agencies. “There’s a commonality in the belief that we have to attack this issue from a number of different standpoints,” Laurencin said.
A report published in June and co-authored by Laurencin shows declining numbers of Black males in medical schools since the 1970s.
Dr. Louis Sullivan, former president of Morehouse School of Medicine and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services from 1989 to 1993, gave the opening keynote. Over a decade ago, Sullivan pioneered research on the lack of minority populations in the health professions. That work was a precursor to these contemporary discussions of equity in medicine and health sciences.
For Sullivan, these disparities in the profession have a profound impact on the patients.
