The U.S. Supreme Court has made a ruling in a case considering race as one factor in academic admission, which allows medical schools to create a more racially and ethnically diverse physician workforce that more closely reflects the patient population and can combat racial disparities in health outcomes.
Where the case began and its result
In Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, Abigail Fisher, a white applicant, was rejected from the University of Texas undergraduate college and sued the university, asserting that the school preferred African-American students over whites and that she would have been accepted if racial preferences were not in place.
In 2013, the Supreme Court held that the University of Texas could potentially use racial preferences in its admission decisions under limited circumstances, known as “strict scrutiny.” The Supreme Court remanded the case to the court of appeals for determination of whether the University’s racial preferences met the strict scrutiny standard.
On remand, the court of appeals confirmed its earlier ruling, which had approved the racial preferences. The latest Supreme Court ruling affirmed the court of appeals application of the strict scrutiny standard to the University of Texas admission policies.
“The goal of increasing medical career opportunities for minorities is an important step in developing a diverse physician workforce that will help bridge the gap in racial health disparities,” said Andrew W. Gurman, MD, AMA president. “The AMA supports efforts to bring an end to any inequalities in health care.”
Why this matters
Beyond this obligation to their individual students, medical schools in the U.S. have obligations to society at large. This includes redressing current disparities in health care, where minority patients often receive less and lower quality health care.
The schools in this country are charged with ensuring that future physicians will be able to practice medicine at the highest levels and that competent medical care in different practice areas will be available to all who need it.
“The current picture of health in America is simultaneously bright and bleak,” the AMA said in an amicus brief (log in). “While we are better equipped than ever with biomedical knowledge and technology to both avoid disease and prevent early death, certain segments of the population have been slow to benefit from these advancements.”
While the country continues to grow more diverse, minority populations still lag behind on nearly every health indicator, including health care coverage, life expectancy and disease rates. Several studies show that patients who share racial or gender characteristics with their treating physicians report greater satisfaction and higher rates of medication compliance.
“Unlike most undergraduate institutions, medical and other health professional schools have always considered and highly value personal interviews in order to learn what the applicant’s background would contribute to a culturally competent workforce,” the brief said. “Removing the ability of medical schools to consider applicants’ race and ethnicity as one of many personal attributes would undermine their ability to assess the entirety of each individual’s background, thus frustrating the goal of best serving the public’s health.”
The AMA is dedicating resources to numerous efforts aimed at addressing health care disparities, including developing and implementing an initiative focused on reducing inequalities in hypertension control and diabetes prevention. The AMA also has funded several medical school members of the AMA’s Accelerating Change in Medical Education Consortium to implement projects intended to increase diversity among physicians and reduce disparities in health care.
