Aggregated News
The nation’s largest doctors group Tuesday released a comprehensive plan aimed at dismantling structural racism inside its own ranks and within the U.S. medical establishment.
The American Medical Association’s plan has been in the works for more than a year. The group’s leaders said health inequities highlighted by the pandemic, ongoing police brutality and recent race-based crimes have given the effort a sense of urgency.
’’We’re working very hard at AMA to increase not just diversity in the health care work force but in understanding of health inequities,” said Dr. Gerald Harmon, who becomes AMA president next month.
All people deserve equitable health care and it has long been known that people of color ’’do better when their health care is delivered by providers of color,” Harmon said.
U.S. physicians are overwhelmingly white and AMA membership tends to reflect that. Most of the group’s 21 trustees are white. With roughly 270,000 members, the group represents a little more than a quarter of U.S. doctors.
The AMA plan calls for more than diversifying its staff and adding members who are from...