AMA apologizes to black doctors for bias practices

Jet, July 28, 2008 by Keri Carpenter

After more than a century of inequity, the American Medical Association (AMA) recently apologized for its history of racial bias and discriminatory practices regarding Black physician participation within the AMA.

The apology was encouraged by the results of a study that began in 2005, in which the AMA, the nation's largest medical association, summoned an independent group of experts to investigate racial bias within organized medicine.

"Our goal is to identify and study racial and ethnic health care disparities in order to eradicate them," says Ronald M. Davis, M.D., AMA immediate-past president.

According to The Washington Post, the AMA expressed regret for excluding Black doctors from its ranks and for not challenging legislations that could have contributed to the end of racial discrimination within the organization.

"The AMA is committed to improving its relationship with minority physicians and to increasing the ranks of minority physicians so that the workforce accurately represents the diversity of America's patients," Davis says.

"The AMA is proud to support research about the history of the racial divide in organized medicine because by confronting the past we can embrace the future," says Davis.

Find out more about the panel's study at www.ama-assn.org.