Business
Bloomberg Gives $600 Million To 4 Black Medical Schools’ Endowments
Bloomberg Philanthropies, led by Michael Bloomberg, has announced a $600 million commitment to the endowments of four historically Black medical institutions.
Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City and billionaire creator of Bloomberg LP, will be the subject of headlines on Tuesday at the National Medical Association’s annual convention, which advocates for African American physicians.
Bloomberg Gives $600 Million To 4 Black Medical Schools’ Endowments
According to an Associated Press series published last year, black Americans perform worse on health-related indicators than white Americans. Experts feel that increasing representation among doctors is one strategy that could help to address these long-standing disparities. In 2022, only 6% of US physicians were Black, even though Black Americans account for 13% of the population.
The gifts are among the largest private donations ever made to a historically Black college or university. Howard University College of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, and Morehouse School of Medicine each received $175 million. Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science will receive $75 million. By establishing a new medical school, Xavier University of Louisiana will also receive a $5 million award.
The donation follows Bloomberg’s $1 billion promise to Johns Hopkins University in July, resulting in most medical students no longer paying tuition. According to Garnesha Ezediaro, the leader of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative, the four historically Black medical schools are still considering how to spend the most recent gifts to their endowments.
The program, named after the racial massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, more than a century ago, was initially part of Bloomberg’s 2020 Democratic presidential candidacy. After withdrawing from the campaign, he requested his philanthropic foundation to pursue initiatives to address the racial wealth gap, and it has already contributed $896 million, including this recent commitment to medical schools, according to Ezediaro.
Bloomberg provided the same medical schools a total of $100 million in 2020, the majority of which was used to reduce the debt load of enrolled students, who the institutions indicated were in imminent danger of dropping out due to financial difficulties exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When we talked about helping to secure and support the next generation of Black doctors, we meant that literally,” Ezediaro told reporters.
Valerie Montgomery Rice, president of the Morehouse School of Medicine, stated that the contribution eased an average of $100,000 in debt for enrolled medical students and had considerably increased her school’s fundraising.
“But our endowment, particularly its size, has been challenging, and we have been extremely public about it. “And he heard us,” she added of Bloomberg and the most recent donation.
In January, the Lilly Endowment donated $100 million to The United Negro College Fund to establish a pooled endowment fund for 37 HBCUs. That same month, Ronda Stryker and her husband, William Johnston, chairman of Greenleaf Trust, gave Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta, a $100 million donation.
Denise Smith, deputy director of higher education policy and senior fellow at The Century Foundation, said the gift to Spelman was the largest single donation to an HBCU she was aware of, speaking before Bloomberg Philanthropies’ announcement on Tuesday.
Smith wrote a 2021 study on the financial discrepancies between HBCUs and other higher education institutions, noting how many states failed to fulfill their obligations to fund historically Black land grant schools. As a result, she stated that philanthropic gifts have played a significant part in the sustainability of HBCUs, citing billionaire philanthropist and author MacKenzie Scott’s gifts to HBCUs in 2020 and 2021 as sparking a fresh chain reaction of support from other large contributors.
According to Smith, “the Donations that have followed are the type of momentum and support that institutions need in this moment.”
Bloomberg Gives $600 Million To 4 Black Medical Schools’ Endowments
Dr. Yolanda Lawson, president of the National Medical Association, expressed “relief” when she learned about the presence of the four medical schools. With the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn affirmative action last year and attacks on programs designed to promote inclusion and equity in schools, she expects the four schools to play an even larger role in training and growing the number of Black physicians.
She remarked, “This chance and investment benefit not only those four universities but also our country. “It impacts the nation’s health.”
Utibe Essien, a physician and assistant professor at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine who studies racial disparities in treatment, believes that more investment, particularly in early educational support before high school and college, would increase the number of Black students who choose to study medicine.
He also feels that the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action and the pushback against initiatives to address historical discrimination and racial imbalances impact student choices.
“It’s hard for some of the trainees who are thinking about going into this space to see some of that backlash and pursue it,” he told me. Again, I think we get into this spiral where in five to ten years, we’re going to see a concerning drop in the numbers of diverse people in our field.”
SOURCE | CNN
