Underrepresented: the number of blacks and Latinos in medical schools continues to lag, and efforts to build it are now in jeopardy

Chicago Reporter, The, June, 2004 by Justina Wang

In 1980, when Bill McDade entered medical school at the University of Chicago, he was the only African American student in his class. "I felt very isolated," said McDade, who graduated in 1990 and then did his residency at Harvard University's Massachusetts General Hospital. "I came to all the classes. I took all my own notes. I never really collaborated with anybody in terms of studying in medical school."

In the 24 years since, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that university admissions boards can include race among the factors they use to weigh applicants, and several Chicago medical schools have developed recruitment programs to attract "underrepresented minorities"--blacks, Latinos and Native Americans.

But none of this has made Odey Ukpo's class at Loyola University Chicago any different from McDade's. Ukpo is also the only African American in his medical school class this year. "It is an environment that I've gotten used to," he said. He recalls being the only black student in honors and advanced placement courses in high school and one of only a handful of biochemistry majors as an undergraduate at Loyola Marymount University in California. "There are obviously relating issues and things that are different between me and the other students," he said. "But, when it comes down to school, this is just how it's always been for me."

Despite several efforts to actively boost their enrollment, African American and Latino students still are not attending any of the Chicago-area medical schools in large numbers, especially in comparison with the area's general population.

Cook County is 26 percent African American and 20 percent Latino, and blacks and Latinos together make up about 23 percent of all the students at the city's 10 largest universities. But, in 2002, blacks were 6 percent of the students in Chicago-area medical schools, and Latinos were 4 percent. Whites were 52 percent of all students at the medicals schools, and Asians were 30 percent.

Officials at six medical schools-the University of Chicago, Loyola University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University, Rush Medical College and The Chicago Medical School-say that increasing those numbers is vital in order to address the striking health care gap that separates white from black and Latino communities, since African American and Hispanic health professionals are more likely to practice medicine in those underserved areas. But the future of focused recruitment efforts is unclear, as minority programs and admissions policies at universities across the country have been halted under pressure from two anti-affirmative action groups.

Nationwide, the number of blacks enrolled in medical schools has dropped by 6 percent in the last decade. Last year, blacks and Latinos made up about 13 percent of all entering medical school students nationwide-about half of their percentage in the general population.

But those numbers don't trouble the Center for Equal Opportunity or the American Civil Rights Institute. The groups are leading a nationwide battle against admissions policies and programs that "racially discriminate" against whites and Asians. They say that deliberately boosting the numbers of blacks and Latinos will force schools to admit less-qualified students.

"I don't think that we should expect the medical profession or any other profession to mirror precisely the racial and ethnic makeup of the rest of the country," said Roger Clegg, vice president and general counsel for the Center for Equal Opportunity, a nonprofit public policy research organization in suburban Washington, D.C.

"There is no question that some students have more advantages than other students do," said Clegg, who is white. "If the justification for the [minority] programs is to identify students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, then the criteria should be economics and not race."

But some school officials said that increasing the number of black and Latino medical students does not require them to come up with different standards, just different strategies.

"We don't have any different set of criteria, don't relax standards for [minorities]," said Dr. Raymond Curry, executive associate dean for Northwestern's medical school, who is white. "It's simply a matter of how actively you recruit minorities. We have that responsibility as a major urban medical center."

Finding blacks and Latinos for medical school involves "casting a wide net" across the entire board of applicants, said Dr. Jorge Girotti, associate dean of admissions at the UIC medical school. He said UIC looks at college grades and Medical College Admissions Test scores, but also tries to account for challenges the applicants have overcome--such as working a part-time job while attending school.

Admissions policies considering these circumstances provide more opportunities to blacks and Latinos, but Girotti argues this does not mean the school is admitting underqualified students. "College grades and MCAT scores only tell you part of the story," said Girotti, a Latino who is also the director of the medical school's Hispanic Center. "By considering conflicts students have faced, we find people who can survive medical school."