Medical School Diversity Declines Following Affirmative Action Ban
Credit: FatCamera / Getty Images- Black and Latino/a representation among entering medical school classes declined last fall.
- Last fall’s class was the first group admitted since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on race-conscious admissions.
- These declines reverse years of diversity gains in medical school enrollments.
- Experts say physician diversity improves access to care and health outcomes among people of color.
Reversing years of progress, enrollments among underrepresented minority students fell across the nation’s medical schools.
According to a new report from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), in the first class admitted since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that banned race-conscious admissions, Black matriculants declined 11.6% in fall 2024 compared to 2023, while Latino/a matriculants fell 10.8%.
At the same time, the number of Black and Latino/a applicants rose 2.8% and 2.2%, respectively, last year over the previous admissions cycle.
That means either underrepresented minority students are being admitted at lower rates or that fewer are choosing to attend, or perhaps both.
Meanwhile, applications from American Indian or Alaska Native applicants were down 15.4%, and, not surprisingly, their representation among first-year medical students dropped by 22.1%.
Similarly, the number of first-generation applicants dropped 1.6%, and the number of matriculants declined 2.3%.
From 2016-2023, medical schools experienced considerable increases among Black (30% growth), Latino/a (32%) and Native American (33%) students.
In 2022-23, the number of Black students increased by 9% over the previous year, while the Latino/a student population grew by 4%. And in 2023, the number of Latino/a and Native American students grew by 4.5% and 14.7%, respectively, from the prior year.
This latest data suggests that whatever gains underrepresented minority students made over the past decade seem to be in jeopardy in this new era of race-neutral medical school admissions.
Not that this development is at all surprising. Following the court’s 2023 ruling, the American Medical Association (AMA) issued a prescient warning about the future of healthcare.
“Today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court undermines decades of progress centered on the educational value of diversity and will reverse gains made in the battle against health inequities,” AMA’s president, Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, said in a statement. … “This ruling is bad for healthcare, bad for medicine, and undermines the health of our nation.”
Diversity matters in healthcare, experts say, improving access to care and health outcomes, especially among people of color. Minority physicians are more likely to work in medically underserved communities, where patients often face cultural and linguistic barriers.
In its amicus brief for Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the case in which the Supreme Court banned affirmative action, the AMA noted that within the healthcare professions, racial and ethnic diversity is “not merely an abstract goal, but a medical imperative.”
Yet as of 2018, only 5% of physicians were Black, and 5.8% were Hispanic.
The new admissions landscape doesn’t figure to make the elusive goal of greater diversity any easier.
“In the wake of the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision on the consideration of race in admissions and state-level policies ending funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, medical schools are operating in a new environment,” David A. Acosta, the AAMC’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, said in a statement.
“In order to continue to recruit and matriculate strong classes, it is critical that schools support pathways programs and use effective race-neutral admissions practices and tools, such as holistic review. The AAMC and our member medical schools remain committed to increasing the number of students from historically underrepresented groups.”