Per a report by Afro Tech journalist Dr. Ngozi Nwanji on April 17, 2023, titled: "Black People Who Live In U.S. Counties With Black Doctors Have A Higher Life Expectancy, Study Says." Provides fodder to the call to action- that America needs more Black American doctors STAT. According to the study by JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) report shares, Black people in counties with more Black primary care physicians live longer, according to a new national analysis. And could be the key to ending "deeply entrenched racial health disparities." https://afrotech.com/black-doctors-life-expectancy?item=1
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"When AFROTECH™ launched in 2016, the conference — owned by Blavity, Inc., a technology and media corporation — aimed to show companies in Silicon Valley that there are plenty of Black people they could hire." https://afrotech.com/
Similar studies have shown that when Black patients are cared for by Black physicians, despite their economic standing, they are more satisfied and more likely to receive preventive care. Primary Care Physician Lisa Cooper Director of the John Hopkins Center for Health Equity, per a STAT+ in-depth analysis of biopharma and the life sciences online medical resource that also provides "the inside intelligence on how politics and policy are influencing healthcare and medicine." That per Cooper, "the study is groundbreaking" and "particularly timely given the declining life expectancy and increasing health disparities in the U.S. in recent years." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10326942/ Dr. Cooper has correlating evidence per her widely written reports on factors that may explain why "Black patients fare far better under the care of Black doctors." Per Afro-Tech journalist Nwanji the analysis focuses on how Black physicians greatly support Black residents but also shows that all patients would benefit from their presence in the medical field.
Another factor that adds evidence to the study is that Black physicians do not find it robbery to care for and treat low-income and Medicaid patients. Which, per the study, "played a role in impoverished counties having the greatest improvement in life expectancy." In addition, timely evidence follows the ongoing issue of non-or unequal care for Black citizens by non-Black physicians. A Haverford College report shared in February 2021 that "It's well documented that Black Americans suffer from higher rates of chronic conditions—diabetes, asthma, hypertension, obesity—than White Americans and are less likely to receive preventive care. Among all racial groups in the United States, Black men have the shortest life expectancies, Black women have the highest maternal mortality rates, and Black babies have the highest infant mortality rates.
The issues causing these disparities—poverty, food insecurity, violence, systemic racism, and chronic stress—are compounded by the lack of diversity among physicians. Studies have shown that Black patients have better health outcomes and routinely agree to more—and more invasive— health tests and interventions when Black physicians see them. Per the research, "The White-dominated field of medicine has a history of exploiting Black Americans, from the infamous "Tuskegee Study"—a 40-year government experiment that left hundreds of Black men with syphilis untreated so scientists could study the disease—to the case of Henrietta Lacks, whose cancerous cells were taken without her consent and became a mainstay of biological research. Dr. Donna Whyte-Stewart, a longtime pediatric hematologist at Johns Hopkins University who now works for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, shares that "Black patients hesitate to accept white physicians' advice."
Systematically with the preferential placement of non-Black American doctors from outside countries for at least the last 50 years who do not identify as Black despite diasporic commonalities. Some non-Black doctors lack the cultural bedside manner and surprisingly biased stereotyping perspectives of biased White physicians. To many Black citizens, surprise. Despite White plus insourced physicians taking the "Hippocratic Oath, vowing to treat all patients as respected individuals." The systematic process of replacing Black doctors and nurses with insourced physicians and nurses has overwhelmingly stymied quality care for Black citizens. The trend of insourcing physicians and nurses from other countries was initiated in many of America's states during the late 70s until now. This happened because insourced Asian and Brown doctors' homeland origin tends to provide higher education to their citizens at low or free cost. Hence giving them precedence over immigrant populations entering America on the norm. As well as American citizens themselves due to the high cost of higher education.
Along with long-term discriminatory behavior towards Black doctors and nurses in the medical field. Per Harveford's report, "Diversifying the physician workforce makes sense in a diversifying country, but is a goal more easily set than achieved. The medical school adds an enormous amount to the already-burdensome cost of an undergraduate degree, and Black students are more likely to struggle financially. Black students also face a shortage of mentors who share similar life experiences; fewer than 3 percent of U.S. medical school faculty members are Black." The article further confirms that "These discouraging forces work against aspiring Black physicians. In 2018, medical schools admitted 21,000 students. Still, only 1,500 were Black—and only one-third were Black men, a demographic whose medical school matriculation rate has remained virtually unchanged since the 1970s."
An additional share by Dr. James Carter sheds light on the type of working environments Black doctors encounter when working in the medical field. Carter's racist encounter occurred in 2013. Carter shares that "A group of white physicians was reviewing some of my work because they didn't understand it," he explains. At the end of their meeting, the group concluded that he had done a great job but said, "My quiet demeanor and passion always to do the right thing for my patients was intimidating, and maybe their [small Arizona] town wasn't ready for my expertise." Dr. Carter walked out and never went back to that hospital. Carter shares that he "just left and started over" somewhere else.
Another deterrent for Black students interested in pursuing a career in medicine has to do with the Children's Defense Fund "Cradle-To-Prison Pipeline Report," which reveals how local schools systematically groom Black citizens' children overwhelmingly during Middle and High School years for a career in prison per stereo typing plus lack of funding or mismanagement of schools funding from the state. This, in turn, detours Black teenagers from pursuing a career in the medical field by stereo-typing the majority of Black high school students to take nurse aids certification during their high school years. Many counties in New Jersey replaced License Practical Nursing training with Nurses Aid Certifications that make substantially lower income compared to students encouraged to obtain nurses licenses and medical degrees. N.J. State, for example, counties' upper and lower governments systematically blocked any pharmaceutical or physician career training for Black citizens' children by decreasing funds per school budget to limit population participation.
Hence advanced medical training services in high schools are geared primarily toward White, Asian, or Brown students. They are leaving qualified Black students wanting to learn out of the loop of participation because of predesigned budget constraints directly affecting Black American students' learning opportunities. Despite New Jersey High Schools, for example, have partnerships with local colleges and universities per college or universities' mission statement towards the public and pre-adult learning institutions such as Middle, High Schools, and Vocational Schools.
Hence systematically, if the target population of underserved Black citizen's children is blocked from a solid educational foundation, those same children with whom schools are under-resourced and unable to meet Black citizens children's educational needs. Directly do not seek to equip Black High School students to succeed in higher educational pursuits. Plus depletes the number of possible medical Black physicians in the field generationally by design. And this should anger most fair-minded citizens, Black Chambers of Commerce, and higher learning institutions such as Rutgers and Seton Hall to demand equal access for Black citizens' children in the medical and pharmaceutical fields, firstly for the youths' overall good - but also for this country's human quality of life expectancy potential.
Hopefully, with the turning of the page of findings per more and more reports and studies, more American Black doctors' presence will be re-incorporated in hospitals and private practices. This will succor the call to action to increase the number of Black American doctors in the medical field as in days of old. Another benefit of increasing Black American doctors in medicine will alleviate the many communication barriers that American patients and employers often communicate concerning insourced physicians who struggle with the American language when conversing with their American patients. Such action will rejuvenate the presence of Black American physicians like Monmouth County's dearly beloved Dr. Robert Parker of Red Bank & Asbury Park N.J. to be once again seen per increased populations in counties. Instead of being the outlier population of medical doctors in America again. The call to action to once again motivate and support Black students in medicine and see the increase of Black physicians across America will once again encourage Black children that being a doctor is something they can and should become!
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