The Wayne State University School of Medicine continues to gain ground in increasing the number of medical students from underrepresented minorities in medicine for next year's incoming class.
Herbert Smitherman Jr., M.D., M.P.H., interim vice dean of Diversity and Inclusion, recently announced that as of March 2 the school has acceptances from 40 African-American students, 24 Hispanic/Latino students, three Native American students and 49 students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Because the admissions process is continuing, those numbers could increase before all 290 class slots are filled.
Jack D. Sobel, M.D., dean of the School of Medicine, credited the gains to new leadership, a rekindled emphasis on a holistic admissions process, an active community outreach effort, and renewed campaigning and recruitment efforts that had dwindled in the previous decade or so.
"We wish to have medical student, faculty and senior leadership diversity outcomes reflective of, and meeting the health care needs of our local community, our state and our nation," Dr. Smitherman said. "Thus far, the steps we have taken have resulted in dramatic improvements in the diversity of our 2016 entering class. The recruitment measures in particular have been very promising, and show great promise of allowing ongoing improvement over time despite judicial constraints on certain approaches, and in Michigan, a state constitutional prohibition on the use of so-called 'preferences' in higher education."
The Association of American Medical Colleges defines underrepresented minorities in medicine as African-American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian and socio-economically disadvantaged.
In placing the school on "accreditation with warning" status last October, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education cited a lack of diversity in the student body. The national accrediting body gave the school two years to remediate the issue.
From the late 1960s through the 1980s, the School of Medicine led the nation in the number of underrepresented medical students, particularly in numbers of African-American students. Representatives of medical schools from across the nation came to Detroit to learn how WSU accomplished this achievement. Those numbers, however, diminished to the point that the 2015 incoming class contained only five African-American (one through regular admissions and four through the school's Post Baccalaureate Program) and two Hispanic students, the lowest number of students in underrepresented populations in medicine in the school's modern history.
At the beginning of 2015, Dean Sobel, recognizing the issue, formed the Wayne State University School of Medicine Diversity and Inclusion Task Force to address the lack of diversity. Chaired by Dr. Smitherman and Jane Thomas, Ph.D., a member of the School of Medicine's Board of Visitors, the task force developed a number of recommendations and presented its findings to the dean in May 2015. Those recommendations included creating the position of vice dean of Diversity and Inclusion, as well as funding to establish the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. WSU President M. Roy Wilson and the university Board of Governors provided a budget to establish that office.
The average grade-point average of the 248 students accepted for the next class is 3.77, an increase over the school's traditional average of between 3.70 and 3.74 for incoming first-year students. The average MCAT percentile of those accepted stands at 84 percent, within the school's traditional average of 79 percent to 88 percent for new medical students.
"We anticipate conducting ongoing and at least annual reviews of our recruiting process," Dr. Smitherman said. "While in one sense this commitment to diversity will never be completed and will require continuous vigilance, if Wayne's School of Medicine is within five years able to return to our historic norm of being number one among U.S. medical schools at successfully graduating under-represented minorities in medicine, or at least in the top 5 percent of all medical schools in the nation, we believe we would be achieving our goal in this critical area."