Diversity and Higher Education for the Health Care Professions.

Abstract

A significant social innovation after the Civil War was the establishment of schools and colleges to educate the freed, largely illiterate, black former slaves. The new colleges included 7 medical schools. Only two of them, Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, DC, and Meharry Medical College in Nashville, survived Abraham Flexner’s 1910 report documenting the poor educational standards at most medical schools in the United States and Canada. A century after Flexner’s findings influenced changes that made the American system of health professions education among the best in the world, changes are again needed as we educate and prepare health professionals for the 21st century. These changes include programs to increase racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity among the nation’s health professionals. Throughout the 20th century, black Americans and their allies fought to eliminate segregation, discrimination, and bias in the nation’s educational system. The most visible victory was the 1954 US Supreme Court’s ruling in the case Brown v Board of Education. The Court stated that “separate but equal” educational systems were inherently unequal and, thus, unconstitutional. Since then, many Americans have worked to eliminate vestiges of segregation and bias in our nation. These efforts have had a mixed record of success and failure. Of the nation’s 4,000 colleges and universities, 109 are predominantly black, including 4 of the nation’s 142 medical schools. Does the continued existence of such institutions contradict the goal of an egalitarian, diverse society? Leaders of historically black colleges and universities explain that their purpose is not to perpetuate segregation but, rather, to broaden the opportunities for black students and students from low-income families of every race and ethnicity to be educated in an environment where they