US: Interstate Group Works to Draw More Minorities Into Health Professions

[Harold Schiffman]

 http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/04/16763n.htm

Monday, April 27, 2009


Interstate Group Works to Draw More Minorities Into Health Professions
By KATHERINE MANGAN

Health-care educators from seven Rocky Mountain states met last week
in Aurora, Colo., to share strategies and sign a commitment to expand
the pipeline of Hispanic and American Indian students from community
colleges and four-year universities through medical, dental, and
nursing programs. The Rocky Mountain Collaborative to Transform the
Health Professions Workforce included representatives from Colorado,
Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
Hispanics and Native Americans make up a significant percentage of
those states’ populations but represent a small fraction of their
health-care professionals.

The disparities are even more glaring than they are on the national
level, where blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians make up 28
percent of the U.S. population, but only 8.7 percent of the
physicians, 6 percent of dentists, 9.9 percent of pharmacists, and 6.2
percent of registered nurses, according to a statement released by the
group. Finding a way to redress that imbalance is even more critical
because, over the next decade, the number of Hispanic
public-high-school graduates is projected to increase by 46 percent.
“Patients tend to seek out providers who are similar to themselves,”
said Jay A. Gershen, vice chancellor for external affairs at the
University of Colorado at Denver. “If they don’t find them, they tend
to put off care, end up in the emergency room, and the cost of care is
much higher,” said Dr. Gershen, who is also a dentist.

The participants, who represented community colleges, universities,
and health-science centers, hope to expand their model of interstate
cooperation to other regions of the country. They are working with an
alliance led by Louis W. Sullivan, a former U.S. secretary of health
and human services, to identify and overcome the obstacles minority
students face in entering health-care fields. That group, the Sullivan
Alliance to Transform America’s Health Professions, is based at the
Health Policy Institute of the Joint Center for Political and Economic
Studies, a research center in Washington. The meeting was sponsored by
the Sullivan Alliance, the Western Interstate Commission for Higher
Education, and the University of Colorado at Denver’s Anschutz Medical
Campus. The groups received financial support from the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health.

The participants pledged to work within their institutions and to
collaborate with others to recruit and graduate more students from
underrepresented minority groups. Among the strategies outlined at the
meeting were those of the University of North Dakota’s Indians Into
Medicine program, which offers mentors and tutoring, as well as a
six-week summer program, for tribal community-college students who
plan to transfer to the university in health-related fields. Courses
prepare students for success in anatomy, biology, physics, and
physiology, and teach study skills and accommodate different learning
styles. The university also offers a six-week session for American
Indian college upperclassmen and graduates who are preparing for
medical school.


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Copyright © 2009 by The Chronicle of Higher Education



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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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