Michael Bloomberg's organization Bloomberg Philanthropies committed $600 million to the endowments of four historically Black medical schools to help secure their future economic stability.
Speaking in New York at the annual convention of the National Medical Association, an organization that advocates for African American physicians, Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and billionaire founder of Bloomberg LP, pointed to the closure in the last century of all but four historically Black medical schools, despite the well-documented impact that Black doctors have on improving health outcomes for Black patients.
“Lack of funding and support driven probably in no small part by prejudice and racism, have forced many to close their doors,” Bloomberg said of those medical schools. “We cannot allow that to happen again, and this gift will help ensure it doesn’t.”
Black Americans fare worse in measures of health compared with white Americans, an Associated Press series reported last year. Experts believe increasing the representation among doctors is one solution that could disrupt these long-standing inequities. In 2022, only 6% of U.S. physicians were Black, even though Black Americans represent 13% of the population. Almost half of Black physicians graduate from the four historically Black medical schools, Bloomberg Philanthropies said.
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The gifts are among the largest private donations to any historically Black college or university, with $175 million each going to Howard University College of Medicine, Meharry Medical College and Morehouse School of Medicine. Charles Drew University of Medicine & Science will receive $75 million. Xavier University of Louisiana, which is opening a new medical school, will also receive a $5 million grant.
The donations will more than double the size of three of the medical schools' endowments, Bloomberg Philanthropies said. Donations to endowments are invested with the annual returns going into an organization's budget. Endowments can reduce financial pressure and, depending on restrictions, offer nonprofits more funds for discretionary spending.
The commitment follows a $1 billion pledge Bloomberg made in July to Johns Hopkins University that will mean most medical students there will no longer pay tuition. The four historically Black medical schools are still deciding with Bloomberg Philanthropies how the latest gifts to their endowments will be used, said Garnesha Ezediaro, who leads Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative.
The initiative, named after the community that was destroyed during the race massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma more than 100 years ago, was initially part of Bloomberg's campaign as a Democratic candidate for president in 2020. After he withdrew from the race, he asked his philanthropy to pursue efforts to reduce the racial wealth gap and so far, it has committed $896 million, including this latest gift to the medical schools, Ezediaro said.
In 2020, Bloomberg granted the same medicals schools a total of $100 million that mostly went to reducing the debt load of enrolled students, who schools said were in serious danger of not continuing because of the financial burdens compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When we talked about helping to secure and support the next generation of Black doctors, we meant that literally,” Ezediaro said.
Valerie Montgomery Rice, president of Morehouse School of Medicine, said that gift relieved $100,000 on average in debt for enrolled medical students. She said the gift has helped her school significantly increase its fundraising.
"But our endowment and the size of our endowment has continued to be a challenge, and we’ve been very vocal about that. And he heard us," she said of Bloomberg and the latest donation.
In January, the Lilly Endowment gave $100 million to The United Negro College Fund toward a pooled endowment fund for 37 HBCUs. That same month, Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta, received a $100 million donation from Ronda Stryker and her husband, William Johnston, chairman of Greenleaf Trust.
Denise Smith, deputy director of higher education policy and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, said the gift to Spelman was the largest single donation to an HBCU that she was aware of, speaking before Bloomberg Philanthropies announcement Tuesday.
Smith authored a 2021 report on the financial disparities between HBCUs and other higher education institutions, including the failure of many states to fulfill their promises to fund historically Black land grant schools. As a result, she said philanthropic gifts have played an important role in sustaining HBCUs, and pointed to the billionaire philanthropist and author MacKenzie Scott’s gifts to HBCUs in 2020 and 2021 as setting off a new chain reaction of support from other large donors.
“Donations that have followed are the type of momentum and support that institutions need in this moment,” Smith said.
Dr. Yolanda Lawson, president of the National Medical Association, said she felt “relief,” when she heard about the gifts to the four medical schools. With the Supreme Court's decision striking down affirmative action last year and attacks on programs meant to support inclusion and equity at schools, she anticipates that the four schools will play an even larger role in training and increasing the number of Black physicians.
“This opportunity and this investment affects not only just those four institutions, but that affects our country. It affects the nation’s health,” she said.
Dr. William Ross, an orthopedic surgeon from Atlanta and a graduate of Meharry Medical College, has been coming to the National Medical Association conferences since he was a child with his father, who was also a physician. He said he could testify to the high quality of education at the schools, despite the bare minimum of resources and facilities.
“If we are as individuals to overcome health care disparities, it really does take in collaboration between folks who have funding and those who need funding and a willingness to share that funding,” he said in New York.
Utibe Essien, a physician and assistant professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, who researches racial disparities in treatment, said more investment and investment in earlier educational support before high school and college would make a difference in the number of Black students who decide to pursue medicine.
He said he also believes the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action and the backlash against efforts to rectify historic discrimination and racial inequities does have an impact on student choices.
“It’s hard for some of the trainees who are thinking about going into this space to see some of that backlash and pursue it,” he said. “Again, I think we get into this spiral where in five to 10 years we’re going to see a concerning drop in the numbers of diverse people in our field.”
