The Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University has received a five-year, $1 million grant to support fellowships for minority medical students.
The grant comes from the KeyBank Foundation, and follows another $1 million gift from the foundation in 2007 for the same program, the Plain Dealer reported. The money will go towards helping students with living expenses and other costs.
African-American and Hispanic students make up about 20 percent of each 32-member class at the medical school, which is a partnership between the Clinic and Case that was established in 2002.
A lack of diversity among American medical students contributes to “training and treatment environments that are biased, intolerant and contributory to health disparities,” according to the American Medical Student Association.
Racial and ethnic minorities make up 26 percent of the U.S. population, but only about 6 percent of practicing physicians are Latino, African American and Native American, according to the group.
By Brandon Glenn MedCity News
Brandon Glenn is the Ohio bureau chief for MedCity News.More posts by Author
See a related story about Case Western Reserve University Asst. Professor of Biology Emmitt Jolly on micrOHscope.com here: http://www.microhscope.com/?p=2478