| Hundreds come together to help overcome health disparities and promote diversity in medical education |
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| Friday, 23 October 2009 16:28 |
 The 14th Annual L.D. Britt, MD, Scholarship Fund Dinner, presented on Oct. 22 in partnership with SunTrust Bank, featured keynote speaker, Rubens J. Pamies, MD, vice chancellor for academic affairs, dean for graduate studies and professor of internal medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.Dr. Pamies, an authority on health-care disparities, discussed how the current health-care crisis is largely driven by inequality in access to health care and quality of health care. View photos. As a child growing up in the inner city of New York, Dr. Pamies saw too many lives cut short due to health disparities, including his father's. "Forty-five thousand people die every year due to a lack of health insurance," he told a riveted crowd of over 500 supporters. "And half of all bankruptcies in this country are related to health-care costs." Dr. Pamies shared research that indicates physician diversity helps to mitigate the negative effects of health-care disparities in important ways. Minority doctors are more likely to practice in underserved areas and diversity in medical education promotes more culturally competent care. Unfortunately, he explained, there has not been an increase in the percentage of African-American physicians in the U.S. since 1950 and many U.S. cities are more segregated now than South Africa was during the peak of Apartheid. This has lead to an infant mortality rate among African-American women that is twice that experienced by whites and a higher incidence of disease in African Americans than whites. African Americans are 40 percent more likely to have heart disease, 30 percent more likely to have cancer and 60 percent more likely to have a stroke, said Dr. Pamies. One of the ways to help overcome these problems, said Dr. Pamies, is to increase diversity in medical education, which is exactly the purpose of the L.D. Britt Scholarship. The Britt Scholarship covers part of the tuition to Eastern Virginia Medical School for promising minority students who dream of becoming doctors and making a positive impact on their community. This year's Britt Scholar is a Portsmouth native who has taken a leading role both with a local volunteer organization and in the lecture hall. "Up until now, my parents have been the only people who believed in me enough to support my education," said recipient Nicole Lia Whatley. "Receiving this scholarship is not so much a reflection of my past accomplishments, but an investment in my future and how I can help my community." |
| Last Updated on Monday, 02 November 2009 07:59 |
