NEW YORK − The presidents of America’s four historically Black medical schools were invited to meet last week with Bloomberg Philanthropies in New York. They thought it would be a chance to celebrate a $100 million gift the foundation made to the schools in 2020 to help relieve their students’ debt. Instead, they learned the foundation of entrepreneur and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg planned to make a new gift that left the presidents speechless.
On Tuesday, Bloomberg formally unveiled that his philanthropic organization would donate $600 million to four historically Black medical schools: $175 million each to Howard University College of Medicine, in Washington, D.C.; Morehouse School of Medicine, in Atlanta; and Meharry Medical College, in Nashville; and another $75 million to Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, in Los Angeles. He announced the “history-making gift” in New York at the annual conference of the National Medical Association, an organization that has represented Black doctors since 1895.
“I’m excited for what this history-making gift will mean for Black physicians, Black medical school students and faculty and communities across the United States,” Dr. Yolanda Lawson, president of the National Medical Association, said in a statement. “This investment will directly improve the pipeline for Black physicians and help to close the health care disparity gap.”
The gift is part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative, a program aimed at building wealth among Black Americans and redressing historic underfunding in Black communities. Along with the four medical schools, Bloomberg is donating $5 million to establish the Xavier Ochsner College of Medicine, in New Orleans. The new medical school is a partnership between the Xavier University School of Louisiana, a historically Black university renowned for producing graduates who go on to medical school, and Ochsner Health, a nonprofit in the region.
“We have much more to do to build a country where every person, regardless of race, has equal access to quality health care – and where students from all backgrounds can pursue their dreams,” the former New York mayor, said in a statement.
The $100 million 2020 donation was also made through the Greenwood Initiative. That gift was tailored to ease the student debt of 1,000 current Black medical students. At the time, the $34 million gift was the largest single donation Meharry had ever received.
“We believed that lessening the debt load would give students more agency and choice in where they practice and what they choose to specialize in,” said Garnesha Ezediaro, who leads the Greenwood Initiative.
Bloomberg Philanthropies determined that 75% of the medical students who received the debt relief went on to practice in underserved communities.
Donations to the four historically Black medical schools also increased. In 2019, the year before the Bloomberg gift, the four schools received $29 million in donations. In 2021, the number jumped to $185 million.
With this $600 million gift, Bloomberg Philanthropies wants to strengthen these institutions that, despite decades of underfunding, still graduate nearly half of all Black doctors, officials said.
“We were all stunned by the size of that number,” said Dr. James E.K. Hildreth, president of Meharry. The donation of $175 million nearly doubles the endowment at Meharry, an institution founded in 1876.
Research shows that Black patients receive better medical care when treated by Black doctors. Yet less than 6% of doctors in the United States are Black.
“Endowments are important” because they allow you to weather financial storms, Hildreth said. “They also allow you to use the earnings to invest in your students and your programs. It means a generational impact, because students that come to Meharry 10 years from now, 20 years from now, will benefit from this gift.”
Free tuition for underrepresented students
In recent years, several medical schools have moved to offer free tuition to students. The change is intended to help lower-income students and students of color who aren’t often represented in the medical field. Just 5.7% of doctors are Black in the U.S. Latinos make up 6.9% of physicians, and Native American and Native Hawaiian people comprise just 0.4% of doctors, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
In July, Bloomberg Philanthropies donated $1 billion to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine aimed at offering free tuition to most medical school students. Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in New York, also made the medical school free in perpetuity thanks to a donation from Dr. Ruth L. Gottesman, the chair of the college’s board of trustees, announced in March. Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine also made schooling partially free in 2019.