Spectrum News: Mentorship program helps black medical students succeed

Alvin Crawford, MD, professor emeritus at the UC College of Medicine, and second-year medical student Austin Thompson spoke with Spectrum News about a new program mentoring program tailored to assist black male medical students titled “Black Men in Medicine Cincinnati.”

The 40-year trajectory for black men practicing medicine in the United States has a downward slope. In 1978, 1,410 Black men applied to U.S. medical schools, and in 2014 that number was 1,337. During that same time period the number of Black males attending medical school dropped from 542 to 515.  At UC, 26 of 721 medical students are black men.

Crawford, a retired orthopaedic surgeon and founding director of the Crawford Spine Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, is convinced that mentorship will improve the numbers of Black men becoming successful physicians.

“There is a diminishing, if not distressing and discouraging, number of African American males attending medical school, and we’re at a point where it’s become a reality that they're needed,” Crawford told Spectrum News.

Listen to the Spectrum News interview online.

Learn more about Black Men in Medicine Cincinnati.

Featured image of Alvin Crawford, MD, in a UC College of Medicine lab with medical students residents. Photo by Joe Fuqua/UC Creative + Brand.