In the News
Black Health Care Workers Shine Spotlight on Issues of Diversity in Medical Field
From ABC News / GMA · By Angeline Jane Bernabe
As the U.S. continues to celebrate Black History Month, Black medical workers are shining a spotlight on the lack of diversity in their profession.
A biennial study conducted in 2018 by the Association of American Medical Colleges found that only 5% of physicians in the U.S. are Black or African American, compared to 56.2% of U.S. physicians who are white.
While the interest for health-related careers among Blacks and African Americans in the U.S. has increased in recent years, with the Association of American Medical Colleges reporting 10.5% of students entering medical schools across the country in 2020 are Black or African American, only 3.6% of medical school faculty are Black or African American.
“What happens when it's only 5% of physicians who are African American? That continues on as you go through so that when you get all the way up to the level of professor or professors in medical schools, there's only 1.8% of professors who are African American males and only 0.26% of professors that are African American females," said Dr. Andrea Hayes-Jordan, the surgeon-in-chief at North Carolina Children's Hospital in Chapel Hill and a tenured professor of surgery at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill School of Medicine.” …
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