EthnicMajority

(Newsworks) About six percent of the nation's physicians are African American; while about 13 percent of the population is black. Many experts say that gap hinders health care.

So, does race really matter in medicine? Talk to Thomas Jefferson University oncologist Edith Mitchell and she shares a story from her days as a young fellow.

The patient had breast cancer, and Mitchell recommended an X-ray, then reached for her pad to order the test. The patient said she already had a prescription.

"It turns out she had been in that clinic every July for four consecutive years, and each time she took the slip and put it into her pocketbook and she still had it," she said.

The woman's church considered X-rays harmful to the body. So Mitchell worked with that belief and found an alternative treatment that slowed the woman's cancer. Mitchell is convinced the patient finally felt heard because she's an African American and the patient was too.

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(Modern Healthcare) U.S. medical schools made gains in their minority enrollment in 2010, with African-American, American-Indian and Hispanic student enrollment up significantly over 2009 figures, according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

The number of freshman male medical students still outnumbered the number of female freshmen in 2010, however.

The numbers, according to the data, broke down as follows: Black student enrollment grew by 2.9%; American-Indian student enrollment increased nearly 25%; and Hispanic student enrollment was up by 9%. Women made up 47% and men 53% of the incoming 2010 medical class. Altogether, U.S. medical schools received 42,742 applications for the 2010 freshman class compared with 42,269 in 2009.

The total number of first-time applicants in 2010 increased by 2.5%—up to 31,834 applications—over 2009. “The growth in first-time applicants demonstrates that medicine is still a compelling career choice for many individuals,” said AAMC President and CEO Darrell Kirch.

(WebMD) A recent report of a study by the University of California–San Francisco (UCSF) has identified key areas that have been effective in increasing diversity in US medical schools.

The study specifically focuses on 2 California universities — Stanford University and UCSF — as examples of institutions that have effectively increased the number of underrepresented groups in their medical schools.

Both institutions were early adopters of effective methods to enroll, sustain, and graduate medical students from underrepresented ethnic and racial groups in the United States, including blacks, Latinos, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific Islanders.

“These institutions offer a roadmap for continued increases in diversity of medical school populations,” said coauthor Patricia E. Franks, senior research associate at the UCSF Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, in a UCSF news release.

The study, titled “Diversity in US Medical Schools: Revitalizing Efforts to Increase Diversity in a Changing Context, 1960s-2000s,” was released in March.

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