(NAME-MCE) Wow ....

[Sandra Winn]

 Apology offers salve for racial wound
 Medical group apologizes for old policies of discrimination against black
physicians
     By *PAUL GRONDAHL*<http://timesunion.com/TUNews/author/AuthorPage.aspx?AuthorNum=58>,
Staff writer
*Click byline for more stories by writer.*
 First published: Friday, July 11, 2008   ALBANY -- Sabrina Permaul, who is
African-American, has never been treated by a black physician and neither
has any of her four children.

That's the sad reality in a health care system in which just 3.5 percent of
the nation's 921,904 physicians are black.

Such is the legacy of the past practice of racism and discrimination by the
American Medical Association, the nation's oldest and largest medical group.

On Thursday, the AMA issued a historic apology for its long-held practices
and policies that included barring black physicians from membership, thus
tacitly contributing to what amounted to medical apartheid in America.

In a statement on its Web site, the AMA apologized "for its past history of
racial inequality toward African-American physicians, and shares its current
efforts to increase the ranks of minority physicians and their participation
in the AMA."

"It's wrong and I'm glad they apologized," said Permaul, a single mother who
had just left the Whitney M. Young Health Services office in Arbor Hill to
catch a bus with her four children, ages 1, 2, 4 and 7.

Permaul, who is 26, said she hoped the AMA's apology would begin to reverse
the discomfort she has felt since she was a child and went to the doctor's
office or hospital and saw black faces only among the janitorial crew or
secretarial pool.

"This is a wonderful thing the AMA has done with its apology," said Robert
Baker, a bioethics expert and philosophy professor at Union College in
Schenectady. He is the lead author of a groundbreaking study of the AMA's
racial policies that will be published Wednesday in the Journal of the
American Medical Association.

The study covers the years 1846 to 1968 and prompted the extraordinary
apology from the AMA's immediate past president, Ronald Davis: "The medical
profession, which is based on a boundless respect for human life, had an
obligation to lead society away from disrespect of so many lives. The AMA
failed to do so and has apologized for that failure."

Added Baker, "We hope this helps alleviate the distrust African-Americans
have toward the medical profession."

Baker would not speculate on the timing of Thursday's apology by the AMA,
which is a politically powerful organization headquartered in Chicago, and
the fact that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is the presumptive Democratic
presidential nominee and leads in some election polls.

Baker and an independent group of researchers assembled in 2005 by the AMA
were given access to the AMA's archives and told to find and report the
truth. They documented "a pattern of exclusion of African-Americans" for
nearly a century, until 1968.

For instance, physician directories in the early 1900s carried the
designation "COL," for colored, next to the names of the few black doctors.

The country's black physicians, excluded from the lily-white AMA, formed
their own organization, the National Medical Association -- the equivalent
of the Negro Leagues in baseball.

While Jim Crow laws dominated the South, doctors in liberal northern states
like New York and Massachusetts struggled to open doors for their black
colleagues.

"The Medical Society of the State of New York was a leader in trying to
break down the barriers for African-American physicians," Baker said. But it
had limited success because white doctors in the post-Civil War Deep South
continued to argue that blacks were an inferior race.

The upshot in 2008 is that health care in America is still marked by a
racial divide. Health care services for blacks are less accessible and of
lower quality compared to what whites get, Baker said.

One holdover of the AMA's institutional racism is that blacks, who tend to
distrust the medical establishment, are far less likely to fill out organ
donor cards, Baker said.

On Thursday, Permaul praised the quality of care she and her kids received
at Whitney Young, where there are two black doctors -- one of whom was hired
last week -- among about 30 physicians on a staff that serves 18,000
patients, a large majority of whom are black.

"The AMA's apology is a courageous step that's long overdue," said Dr.
Kallanna Manjunath, a pediatrician and chief medical officer at Whitney
Young. He noted a critical shortage of primary care physicians across the
U.S. and said he hopes the AMA's gesture encourages young blacks and Latinos
to study medicine.

Manjunath said the small pool of black physicians means that recruiting and
retaining black doctors in Albany is a challenge. He recently lost two black
doctors to higher-paying jobs.

On Thursday afternoon, a group of black teenage girls who are counselors for
an inner-city youth summer program weighed in on the AMA's apology while
their campers played tennis at an Arbor Hill court. None of the girls had
ever been treated by a black doctor.

"It's absurd they'd keep people out because of the color of their skin,"
said Shana Rogers, an Albany High School senior who hopes to become a
registered nurse like her aunt.

"I'd be more comfortable with an African-American doctor," said Elmeisha
Sturdivant, 16, a junior at the high school.

In the 1980s, black and Hispanic students made up about 5 percent of the
enrollment at Albany Medical College, but current figures were not
available.

Alice Green, executive director of the Center for Law and Justice in Albany,
said whites can't fully appreciate how much blacks fear and distrust the
predominantly white medical profession.

"I'm just delighted to hear the AMA is making this apology because apologies
are important and this is an issue that runs deep," Green said.

"This is a good beginning," she said. "But I want to know what the AMA plans
to do beyond its apology."

Paul Grondahl can be reached at 454-5623 or by e-mail at
pgrondahl at timesunion.com.



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of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y.