ATLANTA – To train more Black doctors, the federal government needs to increase funding and provide more training opportunities to the longstanding Black medical schools, their leaders. told US Senator Bernie Sanders on Friday.
“Our HBCU medical schools are the backbone of the training of Black doctors in this country.” Hugh Mighty, senior vice president of medical affairs at Howard University, said at a hearing in Atlanta.
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Meanwhile, students told the independent senator from Vermont, who chairs the Health, Education, Work and Pensions Committee that the heavy debt many aspirational doctors pile up is particularly discouraging. for white students, whose families are less likely to pay hundreds of dollars. thousands of dollars in tuition and fees.
Dr Samuel Cook, a resident of Morehouse School of Medicine, told Sanders: “The biggest hurdle for black physicians growing is the enormous and seemingly insurmountable financial risk that awaits the shackles of the shackles. everyone who walks through the gates of medical education.
Cook said he has $320,000 in debt and could make more money, on an hourly basis, as a restaurant chef than as a resident. Cook said the federal government should cancel medical student loans and pay medical school tuition for future students.
Sanders met with leaders from the Morehouse School of Medicine, Howard University School of Medicine, the University of Meharry Health, and the Charles Drew College of Medicine and Science on the Morehouse campus in Atlanta.
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“We will take your testimony and do our best — I make no promises — but we will do our best to put your ideas into law,” Sanders told the leaders and students. pellets.
The former Democratic presidential candidate has made canceling all student debt a mainstay of his 2020 campaign. He also supports the need to train more doctors willing to work in underserved communities.
Morehouse Medical School President Valerie Montgomery Rice told Sanders that black medical schools have less money and fewer academic connections, making “support from federal programs specifically designed to leveling the playing field” is very important.
Rice and others say graduates of the schools need better access to more placements in residency and scholarship programs to complete their training. They note that there are not enough inpatient positions to train all the doctors needed and that the recent expansion has omitted hospitals that are affiliated with the schools.
“So if there is a real priority to increasing the number of doctors in communities of color and medically underserved communities, there needs to be specific provisions in each of these programs that aim to channel a significant portion of the population. include these positions to teach at hospitals and medical centers affiliated with our HBCUs,” said Rice.
A proposal in Congress to increase the number of Medicare-funded residency positions to 14,000 over seven years could help solve that problem. School leaders support the plan.
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Leaders including Dr. David Carlisle, president of Drew in Los Angeles, say federal programs to promote research in schools do not provide enough money to erase historical disadvantages.
James Hildreth, president of Meharry in Nashville, Tennessee, previously proposed that Congress invest $5 billion to improve research and development at four schools, as well as graduate programs in health at other older black colleges and universities. Two other historically Black institutions, Louisiana’s Xavier University and Maryland’s Morgan State University, are establishing medical schools of their own.
Jeannette E. South-Paul, Principal of Meharry, said the federal government should also strengthen summer school, mentoring and scholarship programs to encourage white students to apply to medical schools. Such “pipeline” programs are important in recruiting minority doctors, she said.
