The American Medical Association—Medical Student Section passed a resolution in its ’97 AMA-MSS interim meeting Dec. 4 through 7 in Dallas offered by its MUSC chapter and entitled “Affirmative action and the decrease of underrepresented minority entrants to medical school.”

The resolution, in its final form, recommends that the Governing Council study strategies used by individual medical schools to increase minority enrollment.

“Greater knowledge of the most successful strategies to increase minority enrollment would be beneficial in an attempt to reverse the recent national decline in new minority entrants,” wrote the resolution’s author, MUSC M.D./Ph.D. student Justin Favaro. Favaro was joined in Dallas by M.D./Ph.D. students Keith Borg and Deanne King and by first year medical student Kristopher Crawford. The four were MUSC’s delegates to the national meeting.

Concerned by declining minority enrollment in medical schools throughout the country, Favaro authored the resolution in light of an Association of American Medical Colleges goal to increase the number of underrepresented minority students entering medical school each year to 3,000 by the year 2000.

Favaro noted that the number of minorities entering medical schools nationally reached a plateau of 2,014 in 1994 and 2,010 in 1995 and dropped 5.2 percent to 1,906 in 1996 with no corresponding drop in non-minority enrollment during that period. Minority enrollment at MUSC, however, has increased largely due to programs that nurture minority interest in the health professions, support that interest with mentoring programs that enhance qualifications to meet entrance requirements, and retention programs that assist students over hurdles that would otherwise cause them to drop out.

Increased enrollment of underrepresented minorities in medical schools and in the health professions generally is considered vital to raising health standards nationally and especially in the rural communities of South Carolina.

The resolution attempts to answer the question: “Are current admissions policies ideal for increasing minority enrollment and reaching the AAMC goal...?” Favaro recommends that the AMA-MSS pursue a collaborative effort with the AAMC anonymously so as not to associate certain admissions policies with a particular school.

“We also suggested that information on minority outreach programs, minority recruitment, and the objective criteria needed to receive an interview be gathered from each school,” Favaro said. This would include the level of funding committed by the school for each program and the number of people employed in diversity programs.

Passage of the resolution was reported in AMA News, a weekly national medical newspaper of the American Medical Association.

To give medical students a voice in national health care policy, the American Medical Association has established medical student branches at all allopathic and osteopathic medical schools in the country. The MUSC branch of the AMA-Medical Student Section sponsors monthly luncheons during which topics important to medical students are discussed.