nnalese Williams was only 15 years old when she first set foot on the UF College of Medicine campus as a participant of the Health Care Summer Institute — a College of Medicine program that immerses underrepresented minority students in the world of health care professions. The third-year UF medical student from Ocala looks back on it as the beginning of something special.
“Before that experience, I was under the impression that people who looked like me were not in the medical field,” said Williams, who now works as a camp coordinator for the Health Care Summer Institute, organized by Donna Parker, MD ’90, and her team at the UF College of Medicine’s Office for Diversity and Health Equity.
Parker explained that UF and the College of Medicine have a number of pipeline programs in place that target young, pre-professional minority students or students from rural areas with limited access to health care. The programs can include physician and scientist shadowing, laboratory time, college prep courses and, most important, mentoring from current medical students.
“It is remarkable to see the shift in a young person’s thinking when they realize there are opportunities for them they hadn’t thought of,” Parker said. “They see others who are like them or who came from a similar background studying medicine, and they begin to think they can do it too.”
Left: Annalese Williams outside of the George T. Harrell, M.D. Medical Education Building. Photo provided by Annalese Williams. Right: Students in the Summer Health Professions Education Program perform an emergency drill. Photo by Jesse S. Jones.
Nearly 75 percent of participants from Parker’s summer institute program go on to college and about 50 percent pursue graduate education.
“If we are going to alleviate health disparities and achieve health equity in our communities, we must increase diversity in the physician workforce,” Parker said. “It’s crucial to show students at an early age that there is a whole world of possibilities out there for them — that they can dream bigger.”
Medicine by the numbers
U.S. physician workforce
- Non-white physicians are more likely to practice primary care than their white counterparts, and nearly a quarter of American Indian or Alaska Native physicians practice family medicine.
- The number of black men applying to medical school is lower now than it was in the 1970s.
Source: AAMC Facts & Figures 2014 Diversity in the PhysicianWorkforce report
Source: 2015 AAMC report: “Altering the Course:Black Males in Medicine”
Health Disparities
- Non-Hispanic black adults are at least 50 percent more likely to die of heart disease or stroke prematurely than their non-Hispanic white counterparts.
- Adult diabetes is more prevalent among Hispanics and non-Hispanic blacks than among Asians and non-Hispanic whites.
- Infant mortality rate for non-Hispanic blacks is more than double the rate for non-Hispanic whites.
Source: 2013 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report
U.S. medical school graduates (2015) by race
- White: 58.8%
- Asian: 19.8%
- Multiple race/ethnicity: 7.1%
- Black or African-American: 5.7%
- Hispanic or Latino: 4.6%
- Non-U.S. citizen and non-permanent resident: 1.9%
- Other: 1.6%
- Unknown race/ethnicity: 0.5%
MD class of 2022 at the University of Florida
- 135 students
- 67 women, 68 men
- 22% underrepresented minorities in medicine:
- 14 African-American
- 13 Hispanic/Latino
- 1 Native American
Source: 2018 data from UF College of Medicine Office of Admissions
See more stories in the Embracing Different series
PAVING THE PATH
Bill “Willie” Sanders was a critical part of how the medical school became an internationally known institution.
WE CAN DO BETTER
Adapted from the 2018 UF College of Medicine Commencement Ceremony speech by graduate Dr. Cindy Medina Pabon.