Spectrum News: Mentorship program helps black medical students succeed
Alvin Crawford, MD, retired UC professor starts Black Men in Medicine Cincinnati
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.
Related Stories
Is a colonoscopy painful?
May 13, 2026
The University of Cincinnati's Susan Kais, MD, assistant professor of clinical medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology in the College of Medicine and UC Health gastroenterologist, recently appeared on the ARC Cincinnati morning program on Local 12/WKRC-TV to answer common questions from viewers about colonoscopies and to dispel myths.
Telescope captures information about lonely Jupiter-like gas giant
May 13, 2026
Science outlets highlight a University of Cincinnati student's collaborative discoveries about an exoplanet 901 light years away.
UC achieves first-in-world remission of aggressive pituitary tumor with novel immunotherapy
May 13, 2026
Researchers at the University of Cincinnati Gardner Neuroscience Institute’s Brain Tumor Center have been confirmed as the first in the world to achieve complete remission of a rare pituitary cancer using a novel immunotherapy treatment. The findings were published in Surgical Neurology International and recently featured in The Cancer Letter.