thirteen: how do we enable more black physician-scientists?

This entry will be a minor cop out because I’d really like y’all to first read the article put out by the 13 all-white editors of Cell this week: Science Has a Racism Problem. Check it out if you haven’t already and I’ll meet you down below... 

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Fuck Darwin

Thanks for coming back!

[…or perhaps you did not leave to read the Cell paper in the first place in which case please drop and give me 20.]

As I outlined last week, my experiences in science have been on the privileged end of the spectrum. I worked hard, fostered relationships, and I got great results. Again and again. My privileged attitude back then was that grad school and med school should be a Darwinian process that would not necessarily lead to the majority of students successfully completing their theses or dissertations or graduating at all.

But this assumes, of course, it is a level playing field and I would submit to you that it is not.

Mason-Dixon

I knew something wasn’t quite right about the fact that during my 7 years in Charlottesville, Virginia—which is of course south of the Mason-Dixon Line and devout Thomas Jefferson country—the number of black students in each entering grad and med school class could be counted on one hand and, in some cases, on one or two fingers.

As blacks represent around 13% of the US population overall and nearly 20% of the Charlottesville population, it is easy to see that they were grossly underrepresented in our School of Medicine. In fact, during my tenure, my MD/PhD program was around 60 strong (among all the years) but with only THREE black students.

Of the three, one finished.

The other two completely dropped out, not achieving either the MD or PhD. I believe this to be a failure of the program and institution. I also believe this to be a failure of mine because, as the Chair of Recruitment, I actively recruited one of these students, but didn’t do much of anything beyond that even when they reached out to me… twice.

Reflecting back on it now I know that all of us—the med school, grad school, faculty, admin, and students including myself—could have and should have done a lot more to help them succeed.

PRE-MED

Focus on your intent, not just checking a box.

—Gary Vaynerchuk

I don’t agree completely with the strategy that most medical schools and MD/PhD programs use to recruit historically disadvantaged minority groups. They literally just lower the bar for admissions metrics including GPA and MCAT scores.

[They then highlight these students in their NIGMS MSTP grant proposals as a badge of diversity to ensure their funding renewals which is the definition of “checking a box”.]

I’m not necessarily opposed to this crude method outright, but on its own it is obviously not sufficient. If these students can’t perform at the undergraduate level required of a pre-med (which may very well be due to circumstances other than true ability and potential), then they are going to have a disastrous time with the medical school curriculum which isn’t necessarily harder material, but is administered at approximately 10x the volume.

My view is that a lot more needs to be done BEFORE these candidates even get to that level (e.g., at the high school and pre-med stages) including mentorship/shadowing programs, study groups, study skills, specialized counseling, research scholarships, and standardized testing assistance.

Then, when students are accepted into an MSTP or other MD/PhD program, additional efforts should be made to support them including faculty mentors, regular meetings with the program leadership, programmatic activities, USMLE assistance, pre-med outreach, and active involvement in recruitment.

WHAT NOW

I’m still trying to determine ways I can provide impact to address these important issues with my platform, network, and my various organizations… including collaborations and other partnerships where I may be able to add value.

One proposal I am working on currently—through my nonprofit Cure Glioblastoma—is to support black neuroscience students to perform brain cancer research in academic summer programs. I am discussing the above with a few institutions and hope to have more news on this soon.

[This is something that I plan to continue internally when we establish our own research institute.]

If you have any further suggestions I would love to hear them. Please reach out here or slide in my DMs.

[PS: non-Cell article readers… Chance to redeem yourselves!!! Click HERE.]