School of Medicine has few minority students

Art Nadler

Friday, Dec. 18, 1998 | 11:19 a.m.

The University of Nevada School of Medicine has been accepting minority students at a much lower rate than other students. The trend comes to light as a national study notes that there are not enough minority doctors to serve the nation's ethnic communities.

The Pew Health Professions Commission has determined after a 10-year study that only 3 percent of doctors nationally are African American and one in 20 physicians is Hispanic.

Neither the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners nor the Clark County Medical Society keeps statistics on how many minority physicians practice in the state.

"It only helps the community when you have a diversity of physicians," said Dr. Beverly Neyland, an African American pediatrician and 25-year Las Vegas resident. "Sometimes patients feel a little more comfortable when they are treated by someone who speaks the same language and looks like them."

The commission recommended medical schools across the country shift into high gear to recruit more minority students to better serve ethnic communities.

But University of Nevada School of Medicine admission figures show that 19 percent of African Americans who apply are accepted, while the overall rate of admission into the state school is 29 percent. Only 24 percent of Hispanic applicants are accepted.

Since 1985, the School of Medicine has graduated only eight African Americans.

The school's dean, Robert Daughterty, attributed the low acceptance to heavy competition for the school's 52 slots annually. The school's overall acceptance, he pointed out, coincides with the national average of 33 percent.

Daugherty also blamed a lack of applicants. "There has been a problem of having enough minorities apply, both nationally and in Nevada," he said.

But apparently applicants who could not make the cut in Nevada are qualified to attend better-known schools.

Tania Edwards, daughter of state Sen. Joe Neal, D-Las Vegas, applied to Nevada's School of Medicine several times in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was not accepted. She was accepted at Ohio State University, the University of Illinois and several other out-of-state medical schools, and now is working on her medical degree in Southern California.

"The medical school is not doing that well in admitting black students," Neal said. "My daughter never had a problem at other schools. She had a high GPA (grade point average)."

Compounding the problem is that the medical school doesn't have much money budgeted to recruit minority students.

And all of the school's recruiting is done within the state.

"I don't know why the school is restricting its recruitment to Nevada," Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, said. "We need to not only recruit students from out of state, but minority instructors in the School of Medicine and set up mentor programs in high schools."

The School of Medicine has $230,000 budgeted for recruiting -- most of it from private sources, said Ann Diggins, director of recruitment.

Of that, $30,000 is spent on two summer programs targeted to minority high school students. Another $13,000 goes to a program that offers courses and field studies at area hospitals and coroner's offices for students at Clark and Rancho high schools, which have a larger minority population than other Southern Nevada high schools.

The programs are effective. Susan Mecham, who teaches science at Rancho High School, said she has really seen more students enroll in science classes because of the program at her school. About 220 students are enrolled.

"Most of these students do want to go on to medical school," Mecham said, "but they just don't know where at this time."

Successful as they are, the efforts are not enough, say advocates for minorities, especially given that the African American and Hispanic populations in the state are growing faster than the overall population.

The African American population is forecast to 6.1 percent in the next year; the Hispanic, 6.5 percent. Overall, the state's population is expected to grow 5 percent during the year, similar to the rates expected for two other minority groups: Native Americans and Asians.

More needs to be done to encourage minority students to go into medicine, Neyland said.

James Tate, an African American surgeon and activist in the Las Vegas black community, thinks the School of Medicine should step up its minority recruiting efforts significantly.

"If these people can go out and recruit basketball players, why can't they recruit doctors?" Tate said in criticizing the state-based recruitment policy. "You got to get the students interested before the fifth grade. And teachers have to teach (minority) students that they can do anything they want to -- even become a doctor."

Tate thinks the required Medical College Admission Test should also be revamped. He said some of the questions are skewed to certain ethnic groups, and some African Americans don't understand them.

The Pew study, in fact, recommends that medical schools use more nonacademic criteria in accepting students. These would include cross-cultural experiences, ethnic background and how involved a student is in volunteer programs in their community.

The Pew commission recommends that universities and health centers start working with minority students beginning in kindergarten.

"You can't wish for something until you can image it," Neyland said. "Your interest needs to be peaked early. A lot of minority families don't have role models, and they need them."