NEW YORK
AP
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Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies is announcing a $600 million gift to the endowments of four historically Black medical schools.
Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City and the billionaire founder of Bloomberg LP, will make the announcement Tuesday in New York at the annual meeting of the National Medical Association, an organization that advocates for African-American doctors.
“This gift will empower new generations of black doctors to create a better and more equitable future for our country,” Bloomberg said in a statement.
Black Americans have worse health conditions compared to white Americans, an Associated Press report reported last year. Experts believe that increasing representation among physicians is one solution that can address this long-standing inequality. In 2022, only 6% of American doctors were Black, even though Black Americans represent 13% of the population.
These gifts are among the largest private donations to any historically Black college or university, with $175 million each going to Howard University College of Medicine, Meharry Medical College and Morehouse School of Medicine. Charles Drew University of Medicine & Science will receive $75 million. Xavier University of Louisiana, which is opening a new medical school, will also receive a $5 million grant.
The donations will more than double the size of the three medical school grants, Bloomberg Philanthropies said.
The pledge follows Bloomberg’s pledge of $1 billion in July to Johns Hopkins University that will mean many medical students will no longer have to pay tuition. The four historically black medical schools are deciding with Bloomberg Philanthropies how the latest gifts will be used, said Garnesha Ezediaro, who leads Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative.
The move, named after a race massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, more than 100 years ago, was originally part of Bloomberg’s campaign as the Democratic presidential nominee in 2020. After he resigned in the race, he asked for his humanitarian aid to pursue mitigation efforts. racial wealth gap and to date, has made $896 million, including this latest gift to medical schools, Ezediaro said.
In 2020, Bloomberg awarded the same medical schools a total of $100 million, most of which reduced the debt of enrolled students, who the schools say are at high risk of not continuing because of the burden. of finance affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“When we talked about helping to retain and support the next generation of Black physicians, we meant it,” Ezediaro said.
Valerie Montgomery Rice, president of the Morehouse School of Medicine, said the gift relieves an average of $100,000 in debt for enrolled medical students. He said that the gift helped his school a lot to increase its fund collection.
But our gift and the size of our gift is still a challenge, and we’ve talked a lot about that. And he heard us,” he said via Bloomberg and the latest contribution.
In January, the Lilly Endowment gave $100 million to The United Negro College Fund for the joint endowment of 37 HBCUs. That same month, Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college Atlanta, received a donation of $ 100 million from Ronda Stryker and her husband, William Johnston, chairman of the Greenleaf Trust.
Denise Smith, associate director of higher education policy and senior fellow at The Century Foundation, said the gift to Spelman was the single largest donation to an HBCU that she was aware of, speaking ahead of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ announcement Tuesday. .
Smith wrote a 2021 report on funding disparities between HBCUs and other institutions of higher education, including the failure of many states to fulfill their promises to support traditional public land grant schools. the Blacks. As a result, he said that philanthropic gifts have played an important role in supporting HBCUs, and he pointed to the gifts of philanthropist and author MacKenzie Scott to HBCUs in 2020 and 2021 in order to start a new response of support from other major donors.
“The donations that followed are the kind of speed and support that organizations need right now,” said Smith.
Dr. Yolanda Lawson, president of the National Medical Association, said she was “relieved,” when she heard about the gifts going to the four medical schools. With a Supreme Court ruling that struck down affirmative action last year and an attack on programs aimed at supporting inclusion and equity in schools, he expects the four schools to play a bigger role in training and increase the number of Black doctors.
“This opportunity and this investment does not only affect those four institutions, but it affects our country. It affects the health of the country,” he said.
Utibe Essien, a physician and assistant professor at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, who researches racial disparities in treatment, said more investment and support in early education before high school and college will make a difference. of Black students decide to pursue medicine.
He said he also believes that the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action and the response against efforts to correct historical discrimination and racial inequality have an impact on student voting.
“It’s hard for some of the participants who are thinking about getting into this area to see some of those feelings and pursue them,” he said. 10 we will see a decrease in the number of different people in our field.”
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