Recent events spotlight need for more Black female physicians, speaker says
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Recent events that have sparked nationwide protests and conversations about racism in the United States, including the death of Breonna Taylor, underscore the need for more Black women to pursue careers in medicine, a speaker at the Women in Medicine Summit said.
“Breaking any barriers involves increasing the numbers of Black women physicians,” Niva Lubin-Johnson, MD, FACP, an internist and chair of the AMA's Women Physicians Section Governing Council, said during the virtual conference.
More Black women are earning undergraduate degrees, but there are still not enough entering medical school to raise the number of Black women physicians above 3%, according to Lubin-Johnson. Part of the solution will require mentorship among Black girls in grade and high school. It is particularly important to support them as Black women “have the highest number of cumulative traumatic events in their lifetime” and “are more likely than white women to experience childhood abuse or neglect, sexual violence and exposure to gun violence,” she said.
Lubin-Johnson discussed ways to support Black female students, including participating in the AMA’s “Doctors Back to School” program or various Student National Medical Association initiatives, and ensuring they have access to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, courses, in addition to mentoring or sponsoring them.
“Mentors provide guidance,” Lubin-Johnson said. “Sponsors provide students with their active network connections and makes new connections for them.”
Lubin-Johnson, who has spent most of her professional career working to advance the role of female health care professionals, noted that Black female medical students are the most frequent victims of sexual harassment, and Black women often face discrimination during their careers.
“I ran for [National Medical Association] president in 2009,” she said. “After my speech but before the election, my husband was in the men's restroom and overheard a male colleague state that we're not going to have three women in a row as president. And if I had won, I would have been the third one in a row. And so, it didn't happen.”
Medical organizations have evolved since then, Lubin-Johnson said, and she was ultimately elected president of the National Medical Association in 2017. She said her personal story highlights the need for more health care professionals — regardless of race — to participate in implicit bias training programs and for Black women to participate in leadership development programs.
“The [Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education] has adopted a policy that says postgraduate programs need to show diversity. And if they don't show diversity, they need to explain why not,” she said. “The National Medical Association has a Council on Concerns of Women Physicians that recently received funding to elevate Black women's positions as leaders in health care. This will start as a series of webinars about leadership for Black women and likely evolve into mentoring and sponsorship.”
According to Lubin-Johnson, other leadership programs include Drexel University’s Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine and AMA awarding research grants devoted towards the study of women in medicine.