The Impact of Affirmative Action on Medical Education and the Nation's Health

This paper summarizes the history and impact of affirmative action in medical education. Affirmative action was introduced in the 1960s. From 1968-74, there was significant integration in medical education. The assassination of Martin Luther King was catalytic, and awareness of racial and class disparities in U.S. public health also spurred educators, the federal government, and the public to support efforts to increase the numbers of minority doctors. There was growing recognition that minorities were excluded from medicine and that the same minorities who traditionally experienced discrimination had the most acute medical needs and least access to care, thus creating a need for minority doctors. The federal government and private foundations helped medical schools' efforts to recruit, retain, and prepare minority medical students. Affirmative action initiatives of U.S. medical schools have been successful in three ways: (1) racial targeting dramatically increased minority enrollment; (2) the academic record of minorities in medical school has been good; and (3) minority physicians disproportionately serve disadvantaged patients. Project 3000 by 2000 is a campaign of U.S. medical schools to matriculate 3,000 under-represented minority students annually. After the project was launched, minority medical school enrollment increased 36 percent, then stabilized, then increased again in 1998. (Contains 39 endnotes.) (SM)