The report that curtailed Black medical education for over a century

Medicine in The usa underwent a radical transformation in 1910. This was the calendar year the Flexner Report was released, a doc that evaluated the country’s health care educational facilities and identified as for sweeping adjust to the whole health-related schooling procedure. The report’s recommendations in the end led to the closure of about 75% of U.S. clinical educational facilities, including 5 of the then seven Black health care colleges.

For the 2nd episode of “Color Code,” we reflect on the Flexner Report and analyze the ripple consequences it had on health-related education that are even now felt currently, particularly for Black physicians.

The two Black health care universities that survived the Flexner Report had been Howard University in D.C. and Meharry Professional medical College in Nashville. The remaining five ended up completely shuttered. Some estimates propose that had all those educational institutions not shut, they could have aided teach some 30,000-35,000 Black physicians over the previous century.

In the biochemistry lab at Meharry Healthcare Faculty in Nashville in 1956, two learners have out an experiment underneath the supervision of Dr. H.D. West (still left), the school’s fifth president and initially Black president. AP

the Hubbard Training School for Nurses — Throughout the time the Hubbard Education Faculty for Nurses was recognized, a nurses’ residence was constructed to accommodate the college, personnel, and university student nurses. Graduate registered nurses, 1 dietician, a matron of the residence, and 60 pupils resided in this article. Hubbard Clinic was set up as a division of the Meharry Professional medical Faculty, opening its doors in 1910. Courtesy Sandra Parham/Meharry Professional medical School

In this episode, you will hear from Max Jordan Nguemeni Tiako, a resident physician at Brigham and Women’s Medical center about his ordeals as a Black health care scholar. Sandra Parham, a librarian from Meharry Health-related Faculty, tells us about the early times of the university after the Flexner Report. Todd Savitt, a historian of medicine at East Carolina University, reflects on who Abraham Flexner was and Terri Regulations, who teaches well being and human products and services and African and African American studies at the College of Michigan, shares her insight into the legacy of Flexner’s operate.

Meharry Clinical School’s Class of 1916 in Nashville. Wikimedia Commons

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A transcript of this episode is accessible in this article.

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This podcast was built probable with assist from the Commonwealth Fund