As a child, 40-year-old Dontal Johnson dreamed of becoming a doctor, but never saw himself represented in the profession.
“I had never seen a Black doctor growing up, and one of the crazier things is I never saw a Black doctor until I hit college,” Johnson said.
Johnson decided to apply to medical schools in Texas, but when a friend told him about a potential school in Nashville, Tennessee, full of Black students, he was in disbelief.
“He started describing a place of people that looked like me that were dentists, doctors, scientists. So I went home that night. It was still — I had dialup internet — so I had to wait for it to pop up. And then these photo stills came across from Meharry, and I applied that night at maybe like 1 or 2 a.m.”
After graduating from Meharry Medical College — a historically Black institution — he decided to stay in the community, and is now a pediatrician and professor there.
“I think one of the things that’s really coming to light, that patient population of African Americans and how systemic racism, how history, how the health care profession overall has not always been there for this patient population,” Johnson said.
Black patients have better overall health outcomes when treated by Black doctors, according to recent studies.
To further those connections, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced a $600 million gift to all four medical schools at historically Black colleges and universities — Meharry, Morehouse School of Medicine, Howard University College of Medicine and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. Together they have educated roughly 50% of all Black doctors in the United States, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Currently, African Americans make up about 14% of the population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But they represent just 5.2% of doctors nationwide, according to AAMC.
“Having a health care professional is important in the community, but also having a Black health care professional raises all the boats,” said Dr. Valerie Montgomery-Rice, president of Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. “First of all, it’s going to allow us to educate and train more Black and Brown physicians, and it’s going to allow those students to have more choice in where they want to practice and to be less burdened with debt.”
That’s something she’s already seen.
In 2020, Bloomberg gave the Morehouse School of Medicine $26 million to help students pay down debt. Resident physician Jamil Joyner received $100,000.
“It not only says, ‘We believe in Black doctors,’ it says, ‘We believe in Black institutions, and how they will play a role in changing health care for Black individuals,'” Joyner said.
For Dr. Dontal Johnson, more investment in Black doctors is needed.
“I’m a living witness of that, of training of African American physicians, physicians that cater and care for the underserved. So when you look at the data together and say that, hey, when we partner with African American physicians and we put them in communities, we actually see less strokes, we see less hypertension in the community, we see less obesity,” Johnson said.
With healthier communities, comes a healthier nation.