As LaShyra Nolen sat in a lecture hall last fall for her microbiology class, the images displayed on the projector screen revealed a homogeneity that has persisted in the culture of medicine in America for decades.
Christle Nwora, a first year resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital vividly remembers an ethics lecture early on in medical school when the professor asked students who knew about the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The COVID-19 death rate for people of color under 65 years old is twice as high as it is for white Americans, and other chronic conditions like heart disease, diabetes and cancer continue to take a toll on Black and Latino Americans. Some experts believe medical schools have fallen short on tackling the complexities of race in medicine with regard to certain illnesses being inextricably linked to disproportionately affecting minority communities.
Black medical colleges in the U.S. have long prided themselves on serving minority communities and being proponents of integrating culturally competent values in curricula when dealing with patients. “There’s a lack of trust that African-Americans feel about medical research because they don’t feel that they can relate to the people wearing those white coats,” said Hildreth, who is going to be the first volunteer to take the vaccine. “It’s created a huge challenge for us but we have to find a way to get past that if we are going to save lives.”
Venturing into the medical field was somewhat serendipitous for Dereck Paul after he volunteered as an EMT at his local fire department one summer. In June, the Dean at Cornell Weill Medicine announced that the school would take immediate action to combat the current manifestations of racism in medicine by introducing additional educational content related to racism, social injustice, and social determinants of health.