Brief urges Supreme Court to uphold considerations of race, ethnicity in med school application process
THURSDAY, Nov. 5, 2015 (HealthDay News) — The American College of Physicians (ACP) has joined other organizations in an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court, urging the court to uphold considerations of race and ethnicity in the medical school admissions process.
Arguing that significant health disparities persist in the United States along several lines, including race and ethnicity, the petitioners’ brief is similar to that filed in 2012. Factors contributing to these disparities include an inadequate number of doctors practicing in underserved areas, while the solution would be to employ a culturally competent workforce.
The ACP states that medical and other health professional schools should encourage efforts to improve matriculation and graduation rates of minority students. The ACP supports policies that allow institutions to consider a person’s race and ethnicity as one factor in determining admission.
“Preventing, inhibiting, or barring medical schools from considering race and ethnicity in admissions would undermine policies intended to provide enhanced opportunities in the medical profession for students from minority and underserved populations and would counter necessary efforts to achieve a more diversified physician workforce to serve an increasingly more diverse American public,” Wayne J. Riley, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., president of the ACP, said in a statement.
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