Black med school students pose at former slave quarters. |
Stay up to date follow us on Twitter @RattlerNationFL
Two HBCUs --- Morgan State University and Xavier University of Louisiana--- have announced plans to open new medical schools in 2023 and 2025. The two new medical schools join Howard, Meharry, Morehouse, and Charles R. Drew, bringing the total number of Black medical schools up to six.
Those positive signs do little to diminish the many other challenges that remain in terms of increasing the number of Black doctors. A 2015 report by the National Institutes of Health estimated an impending shortage of 33,000 primary care physicians by 2035. Black medical educators point out that Black communities will bear the brunt of those shortages.
Florida stifles FAMU's ambition
FAMU with its vast array of programs in the health sciences --- pharmacy, nursing, allied health, biology, chemistry, and public health--- has long been looking to take that next logical step in addressing the Florida's, and the nation's, low number of minority health professionals however the state of Florida has NOT been a willing partner.
FAMU's existing health programs have been historically underfunded by the state making it hard to recruit and retain high-quality faculty, and even match the facilities of its newer and more well funded siblings -- UCF, FAU, FIU who have each opened med schools in the past 20 years, and expanded their nursing programs to meet critical state needs. While FAMU's nursing program, the state's oldest, has been limited to admitting on 50 students a semester because of low funding and staffing shortages.
Even though the FAMU Pharmacy School has been operating in Crestview, FL, for a decade, the school must still must have its $1.5 million budget approved by the Legislature each year.
When FAMU explored the possibility of opening a new dental school in 2009, Florida's political power structure worked behind the scenes and even out front to shot the idea down.
FAMU's proposal to open a dental school had garnered the support of the City of Tallahassee and Leon County who both offered up $10 million to help start the school, and Tallahassee Memorial Hospital even offered to house the new school. The proposal even earned a favorable editorial from the Florida Times-Union.
And, in a rare show of support FSU agreed to work with FAMU in standing up a new dental school.
But then Governor Rick Scott and his Board of Governor's wanted no part of the new school, despite the fact that the new school would have created more than 1,000 new jobs across the panhandle.