John,
To invest in Black wealth, we must invest in Black health. One important way we can do this is to invest in Black doctors and the institutions that educate them.
If you hadn't heard already, Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative announced a $600 million gift to the endowments of our nation’s four historically Black medical schools, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine & Science, Howard University College of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, and Morehouse School of Medicine, as well as $5 million in seed funding to support the creation of a new medical school in New Orleans, the Xavier Ochsner College of Medicine.
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With this investment in their institutional wealth, each school will increase their capacity to respond to the rising costs of tuition, innovative research, and operations will be bolstered.
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It’s no secret that health and wealth are inextricably linked. More than 80 percent of health outcomes can be linked to socioeconomic factors and debilitating health problems take an enormous economic toll on families and communities. And yet, racial and ethnic health disparities still cost the U.S. more than $451 billion annually.
Research shows that one key to addressing these health and racial wealth inequities is simple: we need more Black doctors.
However, less than 6% of U.S. doctors are Black.
When seen by Black physicians, Black medical patients have better outcomes. They receive medical care more frequently and are 34 percent more likely to receive preventative care.
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This gift is our second major gift to these institutions. In 2020, we gave $100 million, which was, at the time, their largest philanthropic gift from a single donor. In 2021, Bloomberg Philanthropies invested an additional $6 million to the four historically Black medical schools to expand their efforts providing access to COVID-19 vaccines in their local underserved communities.
We have witnessed the transformative power of our initial partnership. The $100 million gift significantly reduced the student debt burden of nearly 1,000 future Black doctors, providing these graduates greater agency and choice in selecting specialties to pursue.
As a result, more than 50 percent of the graduates selected primary care specialties — like internal medicine, pediatrics and OB-GYN. Many graduates also opted to work in underserved communities, urban communities, and public hospitals.
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With this new investment in the endowments of these schools, which have been historically underfunded, we hope to see a transformative ripple effect. This gift will benefit not only the institution’s current students, but the many future patients the graduating doctors will see, the communities where they will practice, and the state of health and racial wealth equity in this country. While we know that philanthropy can’t do it alone, it is our hope that this commitment continues to help attract more support for these schools.
Warmly,
Garnesha Ezediaro
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