Art + Medicine

(bright uplifting music) I grew up in Clarksdale, Mississippi, which is a small town in the Mississippi Delta. Healthcare was very segregated. And I grew up in an inner city neighborhood. Then the neighborhood was your village, and in that village there were people you could model after. I was very lucky my dad was a dentist. Something my father told me, he would say never say never, never say should have or could have. If you want to pursue something, do it. I wanted to become a physician because of two serious life events I had as a child. We had one Black physician who took care of me during both of my episodes. Following that, I decided I'd like to become a physician and be able to hopefully save lives. So I started medical school in 1971. There were 19 women. There were four African-American students, and one Native American student. When I was younger and people would walk in the room, and they would go wow, you're my doctor? It'd be that shock. There were four percent African-American students in my medical school class. There are approximately four percent African-American students in the incoming class at the University of Minnesota. There are actually more African-American men, specifically, in medical school during the 70s than the late 80s and even going into the 2000s. So you actually saw a decline in the number of Black medical students. Progress has been very slow. We were rounding one day on a Native American patient who had just been diagnosed with a severe kidney disease. And one of the senior physicians said I think this is a lost cause because I don't expect this patient to take the medication that we prescribe. And I spoke up and said the senior attending had just prejudged this patient. We all deserve care, and a chance to be successful with our course of treatment. The greatest medicine in the world, the greatest research in the world, doesn't always deliver the best care. And that's what we need to do better. I would believe that the needle was changing when I can actually see more People of Color in all aspects of healthcare. Right now, I think in this space, we're so busy talking, we're not looking for those actual items. And maybe because of my aging, I'm getting impatient. There's a bigger picture. And the bigger picture is how we influence society. How we change policy. And that is something that's just as important. So there's a lot of work to be done, and we need more People of Color entering the field, because that's how we bring about change.