Advocates for Evidence-Based Health Policy Speakers
African American Physicians and Organized Medicine: Contrition, Reconciliation, and Collaboration
Like the nation as a whole, organized medicine in the United States carries a legacy of racial bias and segregation that must acknowledged and understood. For more than 100 years, many state and local medical societies openly discriminated against black physicians, barring them from membership, professional support, and advancement.
The American Medical Association (AMA), in particular, was early and persistent in countenancing this racial segregation. The early actions of the AMA forced black physicians to found their own society, the National Medical Association (NMA) in 1895. With respect to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s, while the NMA was supportive, the AMA remained obstructionist. Nevertheless many historical episodes demonstrate that the practices that established and maintained segregation within the medical profession were challenged by physicians, black and white, within and outside organized medicine. In a recent article posted in its own journal, the AMA has finally recognized and apologized for its past wrongdoings.
Despite significant progress in civil rights and promotion of racial equity, black physicians today only account for a mere 2.2% of the physician workforce, a percentage shockingly less than the percentage of black physicians greater than 100 years ago. One hundred years ago, a revolution in American medical education arrived with the Flexner report. But only two historically black medical schools survived from the pre-Flexner era until today and the percentage of black medical students lags far behind the percentage of blacks in the general population.
Commentary
The AMA, once an organization that actively prevented blacks from joining its ranks, now is embracing black physicians by apologizing for its historical wrongdoings. However, real injustice occurs everyday as the medical leadership ignores the variability in the care received by patients of differing socioeconomic and racial backgrounds. Little progress has been made toward health equity in the years since Surgeon General David Satcher providing a framework for eliminating disparities in Health People 2010.
Article by Stanley Frencher, MD, MPH