Survey finds discrepancy between medical schools’ support for BLM, Black student recruitment

Survey+finds+discrepancy+between+medical+schools+support+for+BLM%2C+Black+student+recruitment

By Amrita Bhattacharyya

A recent survey administered by Kaplan found that while the vast majority of American medical schools indicated vocal support for the Black Lives Matter movement, significantly less had specific programs to recruit Black applicants. 

The survey, which was administered to 58 accredited medical schools across North America by email, asked medical school admissions officers to self-report whether their school released a statement regarding the larger Black Lives Matter movement, and whether their school had specific programs in place to recruit Black students. 

The survey found that 88% of medical schools expressed vocal support for Black Lives Matter, compared to only 48% of schools with specific recruitment programs.

Additionally, the survey asked each admissions officer to self-grade their school’s diversity efforts. 48% of those surveyed gave themselves an “A” or a “B” grade, while another 38% gave themselves a “C” grade.

Petros Minasi, senior director of pre-health programs at Kaplan, worked on the survey. Minasi emphasized the importance of increasing diversity in the medical field to combat the long withstanding problem of medical racism. 

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“We know that there’s a history of systemic racism in medicine, which we think is making medical schools especially sensitive to the current times,” Minasi said. “When we asked admissions officers why they decided to take a public position, many admissions officers said it was the right thing to do, citing the core beliefs of their institution, and speaking up was in the best interest of current and future students.”

According to Minasi one way medical schools can offer concrete support to underrepresented minorities is to offer pipeline programs at the undergraduate level. Due to the specific course and standardized testing requirements needed to apply to medical school, students often make the decision to go to medical school early on in their academic careers.  

“(Medical school) is not a graduate option where a student can decide ‘oh, I’m going to go become a doctor’ and magically apply,” Minasi said. “There’s a lot of planning, a lot of preparation that has to go into getting to this place. And that’s part of the reason why it’s so important for a student to make that decision, or at least get that exposure earlier on, and marginalized groups sometimes don’t have those same opportunities. Creating these pipeline programs becomes really important.”

The Illinois Carle College of Medicine was founded in 2015, and offers an engineering-based M.D. degree program. The College of Medicine received provisional accreditation by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education in February 2021, and is set to receive full accreditation by 2022. 

The Illinois Carle College of Medicine’s “REACH” program is a pipeline program designed to expose undergraduate students to the medical field and grow the number of underrepresented students in the medical field. Held over the summer, “REACH” participants work intensively with Carle faculty on various topics regarding a future career in the medical field. 

Due to the recency of The Illinois Carle College of Medicine, as well as its pending full accreditation, it is unclear if Carle was included in Kaplan’s survey. 

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign also has one of the largest numbers of medical school applicants among undergraduate institutions, with 351 students applying to medical school during the 2020-2021 admissions cycle. 

 

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