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AMA
Apologizes to Black Doctors for
Past Racism
 (AP) - The American Medical
Association on Thursday issued a formal apology for more than a century
of discriminatory policies that excluded blacks from participating in a
group long considered the voice of U.S. doctors. The apology
stems from initiatives at the nation's largest doctors' group to reduce
racial disparities in medicine - from the paltry number of black
physicians to the disproportionate burden of disease among blacks and
other minorities.
"The
AMA is committed to improving its relationship with minority physicians
and to increasing the ranks of minority physicians so that the work
force accurately represents the diversity of America's patients," Dr.
Ronald Davis, the group's immediate past president, said in a statement
posted on the AMA's Web site.
Davis said that "by confronting the past we can embrace the future."
The apology comes more than 40 years after AMA delegates denounced
policies at state and local medical societies dating to the 1800s that
barred blacks. For decades, AMA delegates resisted efforts to get them
to speak out forcefully against discrimination or to condemn the
smaller medical groups that historically have had a big role in shaping
AMA policy.
While the national organization didn't have a blatant policy against
black doctors, physicians were required to be members of the local
groups to participate in the AMA, Davis said in a phone interview.
"To the extent that our practices may have impeded the ability of
African-American physicians to interact collegially with white
physicians, it's conceivable" that patient care was harmed, Davis said.
"That would certainly be another reason why we would have profound
regret for our past practices."
Davis said he hopes the apology "will hasten healing between the AMA
and our African-American physician colleagues so that we can create a
better future for our patients, our communities and the medical
profession."
The apology might seem belated, but it isn't the AMA's first for its
discriminatory history. Dr. John Nelson, then AMA's president, offered
a similar apology at a 2005 meeting on improving health care and
eliminating disparities, sponsored by the government's Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality.
That came a year after the AMA joined the National Medical Association,
a black doctors' group, and other minority doctors' groups in forming
the Commission to End Health Care Disparities.
The new apology is a more formal acknowledgment of the AMA's
embarrassing past, and is also part of the AMA's efforts to improve an
image that in recent years has lost its luster. In many circles, the
AMA is seen as a stodgy trade group focused on doctors' rather than
patients' best interests.
Many black physicians applauded the AMA's move.
"It is true that what the AMA did historically was awful," said Dr.
Otis Brawley, the American Cancer Society's chief medical officer.
"There were AMA local chapters that actually had rules against black
members well into the late 1960s, and policies that made blacks not
feel comfortable well into the 1980s."
Brawley, who is black, said he's never been an AMA member, but that the
apology "certainly makes me much more interested in working with them."
Dr. Nelson Adams, president of the National Medical Association, said the apology is courageous and "extremely important."
AMA's discriminatory actions hurt black doctors and kept many from
working and caring for patients, Adams said. That's because in many
places doctors couldn't work in hospitals unless they were members of
local medical societies, he said.
He said there's evidence that black patients fare better when treated
by black doctors, so these policies could have contributed to poor
health care for blacks.
While blacks represent roughly 13 percent of the U.S. population, less
than 3 percent of the nation's 1 million doctors and medical students
are black, Adams noted.
And according to 2006 data on AMA's Web site, less than 2 percent of AMA members and voting delegates are black.
"We've got a lot of work to do," Adams said.
Dr. Monica Peek, a Chicago internist and member of the AMA and National
Medical Association, said the apology "creates an open and healthy
dialogue for addressing these issues" that black doctors have long been
aware of.
But she said AMA's actions don't lessen the need for a separate group representing black doctors.
Addressing health disparities hasn't always been a part of AMA's
mission "but it's something that has never been off of NMA's radar,"
Peek said.
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