After an internal study confirmed there was a resounding history of racial bias in organized medicine, the nation’s most powerful physicians association issued a formal apology yesterday for its role in propagating the divide.
American Medical Association data show that fewer than 2 percent of its members are black, and that fewer than 3 percent of the nation’s one million medical students and physicians are black, the New York Times reported.
The AMA wants to work harder to support black physicians and beef up their ranks in organized medicine, said Ronald Davis, the group’s immediate past-president:
“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. 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.”
Details of the panel’s work will be made public next week on the Web site of the AMA’s Institute for Ethics to coincide with publication in a scientific journal.