Only about three percent of the nation’s doctors are Black men, which lives in stark contrast to the overall Black population. In this episode, Lee Hawkins gathers a panel of Black men to examine this disparity and the unquestionable ripple effect of representation—or lack thereof. Listen as three accomplished Black men in white coats dissect the hurdles to medical school and representation in healthcare—from opportunity and mentorship, to the power of seeing a doctor in Jordans.
“What we really need to do is expand that pool. And how we expand that pool is starting much earlier. So, getting to kids in elementary school, middle school.” – Corey Shy, M.D.
“And I think it’s an exciting time to say to young black boys that in so many ways that they can contribute and make life better for others by being part of this field and being in medicine and in science.” – Lewis Roberts, M.D.
“But there are also those points where you have exponential change and you’re able to make a real difference not only for patients, but also in your own career. And that comes from having the help of mentors and others and the support of your family and other programs that have gotten, you know, things started in this country to help us be better physician, scientists and leaders over time.” – Eddie Greene, M.D.
Read the transcript:
Lee Hawkins: Welcome to the Mayo Clinic’s Rise for Equity podcast. I’m your host, Lee Hawkins. Today we’re going to be talking about the experiences of Black male doctors in America. And with me today is Dr. Corey Shy, instructor and M.D. at Washington University in Saint Louis. Dr. Lewis Roberts, professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic. And Dr. Eddie Greene, associate professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic.
Lee Hawkins: Welcome to you all.
Eddie Greene: Thank you.
Lee Hawkins: Now this has been an incredible experience getting to meet and speak with you about all of the various things that you’ve experienced in your careers. And so I really want to demystify, first of all, the journey of what it takes to become a Black male doctor in America and actually get into some of the nuances and complexities of that experience. I’m really excited about this. What are some of the things that people may not know about being a Black man in a white coat in America?
Corey Shy: I think for me (it’s that) a lot of people don’t know that it’s actually a very fun and rewarding job to be a Black man in a white coat. But it’s also there’s a lot of challenges with that. And then as far as the percentages of Black men in white coats are extremely small. And I feel like a lot of people especially don’t know that, and that going back to 1900s or even earlier, that the percentages of Black males is relatively the same. And so there’s been a lot of strides, especially more recently, to try to increase those numbers. But as far as a result, we still haven’t much progress. And so that’s some of the things that I feel like a lot of people don’t know. And I feel like we can do everyone justice by having more representation of Black males within medicine.
Lee Hawkins: Yeah, we’re going to talk a lot about that in the coming minutes here.
Lewis Roberts: Yes, I think I would say that it’s really a fun time to be in medicine also, with the advances that we’ve been making in science by medical science, I think we’ve all been through this pandemic and we’ve seen just what we what we call translational science, the triumphs of translational science: the ability to go from a time in which everyone was scared of this virus, to a point where we have vaccines, we have antibodies that we can give people if they develop the disease.
We have drugs that are pills that we can treat people with. This is really just sort of a microcosm of all of the advances that have been made in translational science that people can be part of. And I think it’s an exciting time to say to young Black boys that in so many ways that they can contribute and make life better for others by being part of this field and being in medicine and in science.
Lee Hawkins: Dr. Greene?
Eddie Greene: Thank you. I agree with all that they have said and would add the following: being in medicine and especially as a Black man, it’s kind of a microcosm of what we really see in life every day. I got a chance to engage with people on multiple levels, including the pragmatic things they have to do to get their health better. I get a chance to engage with them on a more spiritual realm on occasion, and I get a chance to engage with patients and my colleagues about where the science is headed, as Dr. Roberts just mentioned, which is also very important. And to have that be a part of your everyday interaction with people, patients and your colleagues is an incredible experience. And I think if people knew that they would be much more intrigued by it.
Lee Hawkins: I mean, that’s really one of the most critical aspects because we talked earlier about the low numbers and there has been recently a bump right – a 21% increase in Black males in medical school. Was that the number I heard?
Corey Shy: Yeah. So that was from 2020 to 2021. So it’s just a one year. You got one year on data point on that, but that’s encouraging at least that we’re seeing some increase in and it’s actually a pretty substantial increase. Now the reasons to why the increase, there’s some ongoing research right now. Some people unfortunately, (think) it may be what we call the pandemic effect. We’re doing some research on some of these things being a pandemic effect that may not be longer lasting. But there’s still we know there is a lot of pathway programs and other type of outreach in medical schools more broadly, taking a more holistic approach with medicine as far as the application process and the people that are looking to matriculate into medical school. We may see a sustained trend in this, but it’ll be something that we just have to kind of see when more data points come out.
Lee Hawkins: What do you attribute it to anecdotally?
Corey Shy: I do think that medical schools are being more intentional with the process of trying to get more African-Americans into medicine. I do think and I can kind of see that anecdotally just with Washington U, they’re making a great effort. And as far as looking at it, traditionally medical school and the process of get into it was very heavily weighted on GPA in the MCAT score. But that doesn’t tell the full story and it doesn’t let you know who is going to be the best doctors. And so you’ve got to take a holistic approach. You can as far as like, you know, background, you know, obstacles, you know, community outreach, research, there’s all these other things that you should take into consideration, especially if you want to have a very diverse work group and to recruit underrepresented minorities, particularly for Black males. I do think the medical schools are doing a lot more of that. And I do think there’s been a lot of outreach from physicians and particularly social media. So I think social media has been a key part of this. Seeing doctors on social media, you know, not only just doing like medical knowledge, but I think one of the big things is for especially for students, they need to see doctors being cool.
This is as simple as that. So I know for me, when I was young, if I I would see the doctor, okay? That was the person who was straight A’s. They had a good upbringing. They had money, you know, etc.. But to see, some of the doctors who may have had a rough backgrounds or, you know, they didn’t have this straight pathway to medicine, he’s a doctor but he also wears Jordans, you know, he also listens to rap music, you know. So having that different exposure, I think, has been very key to reach out to some of these younger kids or let them know that, hey, you can do both.
Lee Hawkins: And you’re 31, right?
Corey Shy: Tomorrow.
Lee Hawkins: Happy birthday!
Corey Shy: Thank you.
Lee Hawkins: You’ve already accomplished a lot. And I want to I want to talk about biographies. I’m going to start with you, because one of the things that really stood out to me was there was an article, I think around the time Trayvon Martin was killed where you actually talked about yourself and you saw visions of yourself. You saw the reflection in his story. One of the powerful things you said was that you actually graduated in the lower half of your high school class and took the A.C.T. a few times. And then within two years into college, once you got serious, you were doing an internship at Yale. And I thought it spoke really powerfully about how people can be underestimated in a lot of the things about how sometimes the narratives that we are told or that we grow into can actually hold us back. And then when we get the opportunity, we actually seize it. You said you were a class clown at one point?
Corey Shy: Yeah.
Lee Hawkins: Tell me about that.
Corey Shy: Back in middle school and even high school, I was a very goofy person. I definitely was a class clown and I was also an athlete. So as far as academics and all that stuff, I was just doing the bare minimum to get by. I was cool with my C’s. And so it was a big pivot for me to try to take my academics a little more seriously and I think one of the key things was I really felt like it was impossible to be cool and smart at the same time And so I think I would try to make C’s or B’s on purpose because I didn’t want to be considered like the nerd, the geek or things like that. I kind of intentionally may have held myself back to try to stay in this role of the class clown. I see a lot of younger students who may be the same situation. They may hold themselves back because they don’t want to have the stigma of being like a nerd or things of that nature.
Lee Hawkins: What was it that changed?
Corey Shy: The thing that changed for me was my sophomore year in high school, it was a teacher. I was in my biology class, and my biology teacher was actually the only Black teacher I had growing up. I was really kind of gifted in science and biology, it kind of came natural to me, didn’t really have to do much studying or anything. She came up to me as having the highest grade in the class. She mentioned to me like I was in the general biology class, not the pre AP class. And she said you should have taken the pre AP class – you would have done better than most of the kids there. I know you’re not filling your full potential. She talked to me about that. She was hoping that just talking to me by itself would be enough, but it wasn’t enough. I just said thank you. Okay, cool, cool. All right. So what she did was a smarter, more effective way. She went to my parents about this. And so my parents, they had a creative way of trying to get a little bit more out of me. They mentioned to me that, all right, Corey we are giving you an ultimatum, essentially: you can either for the next year take pre AP chemistry or quit football. And if you know about Texas football, that’s huge. We had like packed out stadiums of over 10,000 people. And I was about to be one of the starting safeties and so they knew I wasn’t going to quit football and so I end up doing the pre AP chemistry class. And that was a huge pivot because at my school it’s kind of split up between a diversity of about 33% Hispanic, 30% Black and 30% white. But in the general class, the non pre-AP classes, it was primarily all the minority kids. And so when I went to this pre AP chemistry class, I saw people I’ve never seen before. It was like two different schools and it was difficult. Like I literally had to go home and study beforehand.
I was just like school was just for school. Once I left school, I didn’t do anything else, you know? I worked and I played football and so having to go home and actually do homework was totally different for me. And then after I finished that class I got a B. And I was so proud of that B. Other people might have been mad at themselves, said, I can’t go into the school because it’s a B, but for me, I was so proud of that B, because I didn’t think I would even be able to get to this point. And so that was the big pivot for me because I realized that learning is actually a lot of fun and then also I can be good at it. And the reason why I probably wasn’t good before because I was just wasn’t applying myself.
And so having that teacher and that experience kind of put the lightbulb in my brain that: you know what, Cory, you can do both. You can be smart and cool. That was kind of the moment that kind of kind of changed my life.
Lee Hawkins: Someone earlier said, you can’t be what you can’t see. And so hearing your story is inspiring a lot of young people, I’m sure, right now. Lewis, tell me about your journey. What was it that inspired you to become a doctor? I think one of the powerful things is that all of you came from some part of a village.
Lewis Roberts: Yes. So it’s interesting because I grew up in Ghana, in West Africa, and my family had immigrated to Ghana from Sierra Leone. So in some ways, we were sort of strangers, but strangers that had been embraced in the community. My parents grew up there. Both of their parents were teachers and actually both grandparents ended up starting high schools.
And so there’s very strong tradition of education in my family and I found I was very curious about everything. And I always say my parents really had a hard time with me as a kid because I took apart many things that they had bought that I wasn’t able to put back together, kind of figure out how these things work.
But at the same time, I really didn’t apply myself that much when I was in high school. And when I found myself it what’s sort of equivalent to around the sophomore year of high school where my dad was so frustrated because he didn’t feel I was reaching my potential and he actually thought maybe we should hold me back a year in the school. But then this is where I think peer mentoring can be really critical because one of my classmates, and I’m not sure what got into him, but he started every afternoon when he was going to go off to study. He would call me and say: Hey, let’s go study. So I said, okay, okay. I got into this habit of going to study with him and found that I was enjoying what I was studying.
And it was really fun and I was learning about all those things. And so I kind of got the bug about studying and particularly about science, and that really sort of ended up launching me actually. Then subsequently my grades began to get better and that launched to be into eventually becoming a physician and a scientist.
Lee Hawkins: Powerful. Dr. Greene?
Eddie Greene: Yes, like Dr. Shy I’m from Mississippi as well, from a different generation, but nevertheless, we’re both from that part of the country. And I’ll tell you, I think what happened initially for me is I somehow got this empathy gene and it got expressed phenotypically, which basically means it sort of came out and I think it came out because as I said to the panel, I lived with my grandfather, who was my favorite person of all time, and he had a chronic illness at the time.
We had to be involved in that to make sure that he did okay, as young children, and that sort of helped. And then as you live in your community and you say you want to be a doctor, there are people who start to josh you about it and sort of say, really? And then the other people who were encouraging and they would start calling you young Dr. Eddie. And you’re embarrassed, of course. But, you know, like Dr. Shy, I thought I was an athlete and, you know, a young scholar as well. But I realized early on you have to make choices in life, right, and that the athletes that I grew up around were so much better than me, you know, that I had no opportunities. I mean, I went to school with people who played in the NFL and that kind of thing. And so you start to understand, I’d do much better by applying myself to the scientific approach, you know, the scholarly approach and that kind of thing. And that’s helped tremendously and that’s how things got started, along with other mentors who help you to envision yourself as you ask the question about, can you see yourself doing this in a few years? They saw it and they helped me to see it. So that was very important.
Lee Hawkins: One of the persistent themes I’m seeing is getting young Black boys into medicine starts with teachers, seeing doctors, if you can, and being reinforced by peers. Who encourage you or who compete with you or hold you accountable. Is that true?
Corey Shy: Yeah, absolutely. I spoke on the on the teacher front and I can just talk about in college. I went to Prairie View University, an HBCU outside of Houston. That was a great experience for me because I met some of my closest friends. And one of the big things was that we all kind of kept everybody accountable. And so the accountability factor and just the encouragement factor that we got from when we’re in undergrad and also the professors. The professors at this particular HBCU had a kind of open door policy. And so they really want you to be successful. They were kind of bringing out a lot of things that you never thought you had in yourself also and so between having very supportive professors and having a lot of great friends to kind of help you, support you and kind of push you it has been an amazing experience and a lot of us were very close to each other. We have a group chat, we talk every day. We do a book club. You continue to push each other and encourage each other throughout the way. So having role models and peer groups is very good and very encouraging.
Lee Hawkins: It shows the power of HBCUs because I’ve covered education for the past couple of years and I’ve seen the statistics that show the low numbers of Black male teachers, but then the outcomes that can occur when a person does have a Black male teacher early on in their life. It actually increases the likelihood that they’ll go to college and increases the likelihood that they will graduate from college. There was a time when Black people couldn’t go to majority institutions, and there were so many generations of doctors that were produced through HBCU’s. What are HBCUs doing that the mainstream institutions aren’t?
Eddie Greene: I would say they’re giving people a chance, a chance based on many different metrics than just the typical metric of you have a high S.A.T. score, A.C.T. score. high MCAT, 4.0, this kind of thing. There are other metrics such as your road traveled and the sort of challenges you’ve overcome in your life to be able to deal with adversity, how you deal with opportunity and this kind of thing. So that has helped tremendously. And so HBCUs have always done this and have, in addition to doing that, gone ahead and developed these jewels who do extremely well. And I think even the majority institutions which I went to for my undergraduate and for medical school, when they get an opportunity to reach a critical mass, the same is going to happen. And when they’re people, like Dr. Roberts and others who can be role models to help those kids sort of see there was a pathway. Again, it’s about envisioning yourself. You know, I could conceivably do that. Whatever that is in medicine that you think you might want to do. And that’s why we have neurosurgeons nephrologists, cancer physicians, all these different people today. We need to build on that as that momentum is very important.
Lee Hawkins: And when you’re in a setting where you’re teaching or you’re treating patients, what is it that you’re encouraged by in terms of the progress that we’re seeing? I know Mayo has made a $100 million commitment now over ten years to diversity and equity and inclusion, but specifically looking at the African-American population as well, is that one of the glimmers of hope?
Eddie Greene: It is a glimmer of hope. It’s an important one. And you know, that commitment from a financial and institutional standpoint shows that we are wanting to do this. As Dr. Shay pointed out in the last couple of years and maybe three years or so now, since we’ve had the pandemic, since we had the George Floyd murder and the associated unrest in the country, what people could focus on, what were some of these challenges. I think institutions decided to make a commitment to: what do we really have to do to make our society better? And hopefully we can keep this going and have it be sustained and grow it enough where we can keep people in the game, number one. And number two, get more young people deciding: I really think medicine is a place where I can be helpful to society and to help me build a career, that kind of thing.
Lee Hawkins: Someone in the panel discussion that you were featured in said, thinking about a career in medicine was almost like going into space. Was that something that you could relate to? I know that you said that when you were growing up, you had a family that was really encouraging, but you probably knew Black doctors growing up, right?
Lewis Roberts: Yes, I feel very fortunate in that. I grew up in a family where there were several people that already were practicing medicine. So my dad actually is a physician. My mom was a public health nurse. I tell people I got more shots than I can care to remember in that setting. And so to some degree, I grew up in that culture of, yes, this is something you can do.
Several years ago I found something that my grandfather had written, like I mentioned, he had been he had been a principal of a boys high school in Freetown, in Sierra Leone. And then he moved to Ghana to start the first high school in Accra. And in 1913 he had written a character sketch of one of his mentors, and there was this brief summary that was written of this character sketch in The Crisis, which was new journal of the NAACP that was edited at the time by W.E.B. Dubois. And the phrase he made in there was that it was so good and important that young Black men be able to see among their heroes stories told of people who were like them, and be able to see those people as being heroic. Because he said otherwise, the people that are teaching these young Black men are giving them stories of heroes that are of another race and of another time or of another region of the world.
He said these teachers must see that they have a gap to reach across. Their students must see that that person isn’t like me. He said it was so important that young people, young Black men, be able to see models like them. And it’s amazing that, you know, this was 110 years ago. And it’s so relevant to us today because we are facing the same issue. We really need to build the cohort of people like Dr. Shy so that young boys can see, yes, I can be him.
Lee Hawkins: It shows the power of the biography, right? Because once again, it demystifies the journey. And what’s beautiful is this notion that there are teachers who took out money out of their own pocket to make sure that kids could have exposure to additional things outside of the classroom with regard to science. And there was a teacher who encouraged one of you to go into STEM at a very young age and teachers taking kids to church. And there were lots of people investing in reinforcing and continuing to speak to kids about what their opportunities could be. You talked about your grandfather. Was that where you derived your power from?
Eddie Greene: I would say yes. And as I talk about my grandfather, he was not an exceptionally educated individual from a school standpoint. But, you know, there are people in the world who have incredible, incredible strength through time, incredible quantities of common sense that they know how to impart to people. And I listened intently. And like I said, in those formative years of your life, when you really want to pay attention, when you were not sort of trying to go out with your friends and hang out, I listened carefully. And I think I learned a lot and so that was very helpful to me to get things started along with my grandparents and other peers pushing me from an academic standpoint. So having both of those were very helpful and I’m really inspired by the story that Dr. Roberts tells about something written in 1913 to sort of say that same thing, and it could be written today, as you pointed out, because the challenge is having people see themselves be successful.
And as we look around and see sports figures as being successful, I mean, we’re sitting just upstairs from the Michael Jordan restaurant and bar, with basketball pictures and everything else. We can have the same thing with physicians and other people in medicine and scientists who are also leading in this regard and who are also doing amazing things to help change medicine. And we need that so much now.
Lee Hawkins: So many of you speak about the importance of changing it so that we’re focusing on kids.
Eddie Greene: We have to.
Lee Hawkins: Our institutions are starting to understand how important it is to get to kids younger, because if you don’t get them before the sixth grade, you’ve lost them in many ways, although not in your case, luckily. But having exposure to medicine and to science and STEM early is really beneficial.
Corey Shy: Yeah, getting earlier is key. A lot of what previously was being focused on is focusing on like undergrad. At that point, like I said, it’s too late and you already kind of have a small pool of people. And so what ends up happening is a lot of these medical schools end up fighting for the same small pool of people.
But what we really need to do is expand that pool. And how we expand that pool is by starting much earlier. So getting kids in elementary school, middle school. That is the big challenge is and it seems like based on certain programs that are starting to happen, that the big challenge is that it costs so much money. Also it’s an investment that’s going to take a lot of time to see.
People want instant gratification. They want to see the results, measure results in a couple of years. But something like this is going to take a 15-year investment. And then you can look back at it later on and see results that are happening. I think having different pathway programs being very intentional, starting elementary school and middle school will be key to really having a major increase in the numbers of Black, particularly Black men, in medicine.
Lee Hawkins: Dr. Greene, you mentioned athletics and the way that children can very much see these hyper visible symbols of athletic success and then say, well, that’s what I actually want to do, because that’s something that I believe I’m capable of doing or something I can achieve. But Dr. Myron Rolle is a young man who actually had a decision to make because he was drafted into the NFL. And he also won a Rhodes scholarship. And he was interviewing for the Rhodes Scholarship at the time that he was drafted and chose the Rhodes Scholarship over going into the NFL draft. Is that an estimation that most people see? Because actually you make more money over time if you are the neurosurgeon that he ultimately became as opposed to entering the NFL.
Eddie Greene: I haven’t ever talked to Dr. Rolle or know his inner thoughts about why he made that decision specifically. But if I were to imagine, I suspect he looked at the long term propositions and said, you know, where can I have the greatest impact? That takes a level of sincerity and understanding of who you are. He was already at the top of the pyramid at the actual point of it when you think about being a potential NFL draftee. And then being a Rhodes Scholar and then going on to neurosurgery. So that sort of points out the kind of talent that this young man has. And so I think, you know, that’s a situation where any of us would be envious of getting there, but not many will be able to reach that. I think some people make the choices based on the immediate gratification versus what can I do long term that’s sustainable and will make a difference in an impact.
If I could just point out one additional thing about this. I mentioned in the panel that one of the other opportunities we have as practicing physicians now, as scientists, as researchers, whenever were put in front of patients, and they come from all different backgrounds and especially with the minority patient, there’s an opportunity. I’m thinking that we have an opportunity to help them think about how might we grow our own in our communities. I know it’s a challenge, but if we can think of that concept and take it to another level where you can get the policy people to sort of think about it along with their advocacy, we might be able to do something and as you point out, Dr. Shy, that we can get kids early on to think about what can I do to help my community. You know, being a doctor is a great thing, but we need so many people in health care. But I think for the young Black males changing that whole vision of their trajectory and then keeping them in a safe space away from the elements in our society that want to take them off of that pathway of where can I be helpful. This is a challenge for us and I think there’s a real opportunity here and I’m glad that we have this discussion today and we should have many more across the country like this.
Lee Hawkins: Well, maybe you guys should hit the road. What role does resilience play, obviously over the years, you’ve built it and continue to build it every day. How do you build it?
Lewis Roberts: I guess I would say one encounter at a time to some degree. But I think that that’s also to some degree where mentors, allies, sponsors come into play, because I think sometimes you look at a person and wonder what it took to reach a certain level and you know, for I think all of us, it’s been multiple people that have helped at different levels, creates spaces that are safe within which we can grow.
I think that’s really critical for us to think as we are looking at young Black males today, because I think that many young Black males today feel that in many of the spaces they are in, they are under threat. Being able to take them and bring them into spaces where I think it’s important to recognize that diversity is so critical because of the diversity of experiences. Perspectives that people bring into teams is really what makes the most effective, most highly functioning teams that we have, and it’s important that people be able to see that, yes, I can be part of this team, I can be safe in this team, I can contribute in this team. It’s important also that people don’t feel like they have to be representing anybody in that team. You know, sometimes we tend to think, yeah, I’m the diverse person here. I have to be, quote, the model minority here. But that then takes away from people’s own settled uniqueness. And it’s really important that we create the spaces where people can be themselves, because when they are their authentic selves, we can see their most creative expressions.
It’s important to recognize also that teams are richest when we have people of different personalities. We do these personality type inventories and we see, that there’s people that have different personalities innately. Those personalities aren’t innate to any particular race or ethnic group. And so if we have enough people that are minority in spaces, then that allows people to be free to be themselves. They are not being the representative of any particular race, they’re just being their own unique selves. I think that there’s a particular challenge that for institutions, for communities, for industry and for the academic community in terms of thinking about how we create the spaces to best maximize the contributions of Black males.
Lee Hawkins: Sometimes people come in and they’re surprised to see you that you’re the doctor. Tell me about that.
Eddie Greene: Well, you know, you walk into a room and perhaps a patient has never met and or known or interacted with a Black male, and especially in the medical profession, and especially as a person who is leading the team of physicians or health care providers. They’re somewhat shocked to see you. But if you’re able to understand them, have them understand you and use the best skills that you’ve been taught to do that, helping them get to where they want to go in their health care journey can usually overcome any initial shock.
When you ask about resiliency. You have to have it even when some initial encounters may not necessarily go the way you envision. You have to keep those in mind. Remember that in the journey that we’re taking, like everything in life, our careers are journeys as well. There are points where it might seem that there there’s a certain level of tedium and Groundhog Day experiences where I’m doing the same thing. But there are also those points where you have exponential change and you’re able to make a real difference not only for patients, but also in your own career. And that comes from having the help of mentors and others and the support of your family and other programs that have gotten, you know, things started in this country to help us be better physician, scientists and leaders over time.
Lee Hawkins: So for the people listening to this podcast today, what are the actionable things they can do right now to help improve the outcomes and to help recruit more Black boys into the field, into science, into medicine, and ultimately start to address this issue?
Corey Shy: I think there’s a couple of things. I think the one thing was the pathway programs as we talked about. So having those and then also starting those earlier is one. Also making having a space for whenever you do recruit them that they feel, you know, safe and comfortable, that they can also continue their career and also progress their career and not drop out or other things of that nature.
It also would be creating more HBCU med schools. I think also doing that. As far as HBCU use, I think that’s another thing that we can all make for an increase in some of the numbers as far as Black men in medicine.
Eddie Greene: So practical things that we can do.
Lee Hawkins: Yeah. What are the actionable things that can be done right now to effect change?
Eddie Greene: I agree with the pathways. I believe intentionality, as Dr. Horner talked about earlier today, and using our community. As we look out the windows from where we’re sitting, there are multiple advertisements and pictures selling all kinds of things. Why can’t we sell medicine? We’ve started to do it actually in some ways. In my own specialty, for example, now as we think about kidney disease, diabetes, we’re seeing many more patients and their families who look like us in some of those advertisement. We’d never seen that before
We’re also seeing practitioners of medicine and the people dispensing the care and the medicine who look like us and that will start some of the change. And then I think in families asking, how can I be helpful to my family and my community as a young child, as a young boy, and sort of keeping that flame going along with the pathway programs. And we have to start a lot earlier. As Dr. Shy pointed out, it’s much too late by the time we were in college and medical school. We had to have the beforehand and perhaps will get even more Myron Rolls, where you can be a superstar sports individual, but at at the same time realize I have to study as well and I’m going to be a scholar and an athlete and that will produce amazing opportunities for a lot of kids to want to keep this thing going because, you know, if you’re an athlete, you’re probably in great health as well, and that helps you. But being a scholar, you can think about it and pass that on. And then the peer mentorship I think is also important. And Lewis, you pointed out that you had that, after school and this kind of thing. Whatever we can do to create sort of an academy of young people who really believe that they can accomplish this.
Lee Hawkins: And you mentioned something great that I think is important to say, and that’s that the mainstream institutions need to look at what the HBCU are doing, but not think that that gets them off the hook. I mean, what can they do to step up?
Eddie Greene: Having the team to, you know, have diverse individuals on it can be extremely helpful in growing the ability to bring in additional individuals and creating a safe space where people can grow. And as we expand the pool by expanding what HBCU’s can do, accompanied by assistance, appropriate assistance from mainstream and or majority institutions will create larger opportunities. And again, that’s so important for our work on health disparities and how we eliminate those and opportunities to create more people who can be of assistance in that in that whole sphere.
Lee Hawkins: Yes. And when you talk to patients from our community, do you feel are you more likely to emphasize prevention or to recognize things early on in the pathway?
Eddie Greene: Yes. Well, we all know as physicians and each one of us can speak to this I’m sure, By the time you get to see me as a physician, I’m a nephrologist. By the time you get to see me, things may be much too late. We’re talking about dialysis. We’re talking about transplantation. We are talking about treating a very complex set of kidney problems that, you know, can cause major problems with your health. And so anything that we can do to prevent it, you know, is going to be a major thing. And so that opportunity is there for us as well. And again, having some level of congruence between a Black male physician talking to a Black male patient or even an African-American patient or minority patient, for that matter, is tremendously helpful.
And then if we also think of our importance, maybe not even training it, but our importance in helping the public health situation in the country, you know, we play a big role in helping people to understand how to do preventive things, to keep their health as good as they can for the longevity of their life. And I’ll just give one quote from William J Mayo. You know, it’s on the walls at the Mayo Clinic in addition to the needs of the patient come first, there was a quote that says: “The health of a nation is its greatest asset.” And if we can get to that point where we’re changing that whole landscape for not only a certain segment of America, but for all Americans, and particularly in minority communities, we will have done something big, and getting more Black men into medicine will help that. There’s no doubt in my mind.
Lee Hawkins: Excellent. Dr. Roberts, I’m going to let you close out. And what are the actionable things that can be done right now to address this issue?
Lewis Roberts: I think I’ll pick up from something that Dr. Greene just said, but also from something that Dr. Horne said in her talk, which was relating to the idea of infrastructure. I think that it’s really important that we think about building a sustainable, long term infrastructure and conceptually thinking about how we can build this. I think it’s really important to think in a team manner. And I think Dr. Greene was just talking about partnerships between HBCUs and the large majority academic institutions, for example. I think that important to see that as part of a larger partnership, we need a partnership between communities, between academic institutions and also between the government and industry and recognize that we’re all, to some degree in this together because we all have interests in improving the overall health of the society. So figuring out ways that we can work together and build together I think is critical.
Lee Hawkins: Gentlemen, thank you very much. You’re making a profound impact on society. And I’m so proud of all of you. Keep up the good work. And for Mayo Clinic’s Rise for Equity podcast, I’m Lee Hawkins. We’ll see you next time.
