A report
by a team of scholars, including Dr. Robert Baker, Director of the Union
Graduate College-Mount Sinai, �African American Physicians and Organized
Medicine, 1846-1968: Origins of a Racial Divide� http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/300.3.306,
promoted the Board of Trustees of the American Medical Association to apologize
for a �past history of racial inequality�
Text from
AMA website:
AMA
apologizes for history of racial inequality and works to include and promote
minority physicians
For immediate release
July 10, 2008
CHICAGO, Ill. - The American Medical
Association (AMA) today apologizes for its past history of racial inequality
toward African-American physicians, and shares its current efforts to increase
the ranks of minority physicians and their participation in the AMA. In 2005,
the AMA convened and supported an independent panel of experts to study the
history of the racial divide in organized medicine, and the culmination of this
work prompted the apology. Details of the panel�s work will be made public next
week on the Web site of the AMA�s Institute for Ethics to coincide with
publication in a scientific journal.
"The AMA
is proud to support research about the history of the racial divide in
organized medicine because by confronting the past we can embrace the
future," said AMA Immediate-Past President Ronald M. Davis, M.D. "The
AMA is committed to improving its relationship with minority physicians and to
increasing the ranks of minority physicians so that the workforce accurately
represents the diversity of America�s patients."
The AMA
created the Minority Affairs Consortium (MAC) to address the specific needs of
minority physicians and to stimulate and support efforts to train more minority
physicians. The philanthropic arm of the AMA each year provides $10,000
scholarships to medical student winners of the AMA Foundation Minority Scholars
Award, in collaboration with the MAC. This year, 12 students received the
award.
"Five
years ago, the AMA joined with the National Medical Association and the
National Hispanic Medical Association to create the Commission to End Health
Care Disparities," said Dr. Davis. "Our goal is to identify and study
racial and ethnic health care disparities in order to eradicate them. We strongly
support the �Doctors Back to School� program, which the AMA founded, to inspire
minority students to become the next generation of minority physicians."
The Doctors
Back to School program, which was developed by the AMA and adopted by the
Commission, has visited more than 100 schools, ranging from elementary schools
to undergraduate colleges, nationwide. The program has reached out to nearly
13,000 students to urge them to consider a career in medicine. More information
about the program and the Commission are available on the AMA Web site.
Contact:
Katherine M. Hatwell
Senior Public Information Officer
AMA Media Relations
202-789-7419
Katherine.hatwell@ama-assn.org
