Where Are All the Black and Latino Doctors?

Where Are All the Black and Latino Doctors?

Very few hands are raised.

How many are there? Take a look at the numbers to see how few.

Five percent of the all practicing medical doctors in this country are Black but they make up 13% of the U.S. population. 

Similarly, Hispanic/Latino doctors make up 5.8% of all practicing doctors in the U.S. when they represent 18% of the U.S. population, according to the 2019 Diversity in Medicine report by Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

Asians, on the other hand, represent higher than average numbers of doctors, 17% of all doctors in the U.S. and represent 6% of the U.S. population.

What does this mean to healthcare?

It means there are huge shortages of healthcare providers who don't look like the patients they serve. Patients are likely to experience barriers and cultural differences during their medical encounters with doctors who do not come from their communities or use the language their patients prefer.

My guess is that if we had more Black and Latino doctors, we would have more Blacks and Latinos getting the Covid-19 vaccine, too.

We need to get going and build the next generation of Black and Hispanic physicians.

What are we doing to address the healthcare gap?

In September 2020, former New York Mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg has given a huge chunk of money to the four historically black medical schools.

In total, Bloomberg gave around $100 million to the four historically black medical schools to be distributed among them over the next four years: $34 million to Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, $26.3 million to the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, $7.7 million to Charles R. Drew University of Medicine in Los Angeles and $32.8 million to Howard University College of Medicine in Washington.

Unfortunately, Hispanics don't have the tradition of having "Historically Hispanic Colleges" in the same way that Blacks do. In fact, many Hispanic medical students are the first in the family to go to college. Surprisingly, the top medical schools that have the highest number of Hispanic medical student applicants are in Puerto Rico. After Puerto Rico, Florida comes next: Florida International University in Miami, University of Florida in Gainesville. 

Aspiring Hispanic medical students need mentorship opportunities and one Chicago non-profit organization is doing just that. Formed in 2017, The Medical Organization for Latino Advancement (MOLA)  supplies mentorship to Chicago-area high school students interested in medicine and at the same time, networking opportunities for Hispanic physicians.

We need more organizations like these.

As you can see, there's an awful lot of work to be done. 

We need to establish a medical pipeline for Blacks and Hispanics. 

Encourage more Blacks and Hispanics/Latinos to become doctors. Help them finance the costs of getting an expensive medical education. It will be a strategic way to close the gap in healthcare.

Where are all the Black and Latino doctors?

I'd like to see a lot more hands go up when I ask that question.