Minority Affairs Consortium

The AMA created the Minority Affairs Consortium (MAC) to address the specific needs of minority physicians and to stimulate and support efforts to train more minority physicians. The philanthropic arm of the AMA each year provides $10,000 scholarships to medical student winners of the AMA Foundation Minority Scholars Award, in
collaboration with the MAC. This year, 12 students received the award.

"Five years ago, the AMA joined with the National Medical Association
and the National Hispanic Medical Association to create the
Commission to End Health Care Disparities," said Dr. Davis. "Our goal
is to identify and study racial and ethnic health care disparities in
order to eradicate them. We strongly support the ‘Doctors Back to
School’ program, which the AMA founded, to inspire minority students to become the next generation of minority physicians."

The Doctors Back to School program, which was developed by the AMA
and adopted by the Commission, has visited more than 100 schools,
ranging from elementary schools to undergraduate colleges,
nationwide. The program has reached out to nearly 13,000 students to urge them to consider a career in medicine.
Read more
Achieving Racial Harmony for the Benefit of Patients and Communities
Contrition, Reconciliation, and Collaboration
Ronald M. Davis, MD

Introduction
By the end of the 19th century, US physicians had formed 2 national
associations: the National Medical Association (NMA) and the American Medical Association (AMA). This peculiar duplication reflected a profession segregated by race. The AMA was almost entirely white; the NMA predominantly black—founded in reaction to the exclusion of black physicians by many state and local medical societies and the AMA's refusal to recognize several racially integrated societies. This professional segregation lasted well into the civil rights era.

The complex history of race in the medical profession is rarely
acknowledged and often misunderstood. Yet US medicine's legacy of
segregation and racism is linked to the current paucity of African
American physicians, distrust of professional associations by some
physicians, and contemporary racial health disparities. The goal of
this article is to encourage a discussion within the profession of
medicine about how to heal and unify the profession in the pursuit of providing equitable health care for all.