In light of recent events surrounding George Floyd’s and countless others’ murders at the hands of police brutality, differing opinions on the matter have arose. However, racism is not a difference of opinion. Multiple future healthcare professional prospects have come into light proclaiming their racism, complete with evidence. While there is work to be done to have their current education systems reprimand them, we want change in the future.

Countless, previous studies have shown the disparities Black people face in healthcare. From Black infants mortality rates 2.5x higher than their white counter parts to Black men being 50% more likely to get prostate cancer than white men, but 2x more likely to die from it. Racism is a public health crisis. Racism is a pandemic. We further continue to ask ourselves how we can fix this. While these disparities come as a consequence of many factors, we can start by addressing one. We can start at the beginning. We can start by denying racist future prospects from achieving a career in the healthcare field. There are so many victims of medical negligence on the basis of racial prejudice. I believe I speak for many others and myself, when I say we do not want the lives of Black people in care of racist hands nor to work alongside racist colleagues in a field meant to first do no harm. The racism, prejudice, and deaths Black people are facing both in and outside the healthcare field need to be addressed. Change can start now.

We, a concerned community, ask the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) to formally reprimand and deny prospective medical school students for racist behavior. We ask admissions committees to launch formal investigations when presented with prospectives’ racist behavioral history, and utilize this information to determine if this racist history can put future patients’ lives at risk.

American Medical Association: https://www.ama-assn.org/

Association of American Medical Colleges: https://www.aamc.org/