Prince, M., & Williams, K. A. (2017). Suggestions to increase the number of african american male physicians. The American Journal of Cardiology, 119(8), 1281.

According to a report by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the number of African-American men who applied to medical school between 1978 and 2014 has slightly decreased. In 2007, Rao and Flores2 discovered that high school juniors reported that “financial constraints, insufficient exposure to medicine as a career, little encouragement at home and in schools, lack of role models, and negative peer pressure may contribute to racial disparities in the physician workforce for African-Americans.” Combating these multifaceted issues will require that we first expose younger students to African-American physicians as positive role models, increase scholarship opportunities to lessen financial barriers, and develop premed or science clubs to steer these students into math and science programs. In 2014, according to AAMC of the 1,337 African-American male applicants, only 515 were accepted, yielding a rate of acceptance of about 39%.2 The Medical College Admissions Test costs $300 as of 2016, and a preparatory course for the Medical College Admissions Test costs between $1000 and $8000. The National Center for Education Statistics reported in 2013 that only 38% of African-American children aged 0-17 years had both parents in the home, reducing financial resources and support for academic progress.3 This financial responsibility of the process can prove a deterrent from maximizing the potential for acceptance into a medical school. […]cardiologists need to be even more proactive at all phases of developing African American male cardiologists as future colleagues, leaders, mentors and role models of public health advocacy.

Full article can be found here:

http://www.ajconline.org/article/S0002-9149(17)30043-7/fulltext