Increasing the number of medical students from under-represented minorities

Better health care and a reduction in health disparities occur when the physician workforce is diverse in background, ethnicity, culture, and race.1 2 Unfortunately, there are not enough students from economically and educationally deprived backgrounds in the pipeline to achieve a sufficiently diverse physician workforce. A paper by Greenhalgh and colleagues in this issue describes an innovative and thoughtful approach of reaching and engaging these students.3 The project steering group used “partnering” schools and teachers in inner London to identify students from deprived backgrounds who had motivation and ability in the sciences. Teachers reaffirmed the problems the students needed to overcome to be successful in gaining a medical education: lack of self determination, lack of confidence, and …