US Black doctors face discrimination based on race: report

NEW YORK - Black doctors across the United States commonly experience discrimination, ranging from micro-aggressions to career-threatening disciplinary actions, reported The Associated Press last week.

"Biases, conscious or not, can become magnified in the fiercely competitive hospital environment," said the report based on multiple interviews with Black medical professionals, noting that the underrepresentation of Black doctors can discourage them from speaking up.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, Black doctors made up just 5 percent of active physicians in the United States in 2018. People who identified as Black alone represented 12.4 percent of the total US population, according to the 2020 US census.

For the 2021-2022 academic year, 8.1 percent of students enrolled in medical schools identified as Black alone. The medical school association and the National Medical Association in 2020 announced an initiative to address the scarcity of Black men in medicine.

The American Medical Association, the country's largest, most influential doctors' group, is also trying to attract Black students to medicine, working with historically Black colleges and universities and helping secure scholarships, according to its president Gerald Harmon.