Historically Black graduate school in California aims to addresses the shortage of Black doctors

Renovations are underway for a new medical school building at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Willowbrook, California. The University administration says it’s so much more than a new building. They say the launching of the new medical school this summer addresses the need for more doctors of color.

The university was founded one year after the 1965 Watts riots. In 1966, the Charles R. Drew Postgraduate Medical School was incorporated in California as a private, non-profit, educational institution to address the racial health disparities in America.

Fast forward, the university is still looking at racial disparities in the medical field and in October 2022, the school announced the launch of the University’s first independent 4-year medical degree (MD) program. The university hailed it the first and only historically Black medical degree (MD) program west of the Mississippi.

Dr David Carlisle, CDU president and CEO says the school has already graduated hundreds of doctors through their joint program with UCLA, but having their own medical school has been a dream for decades.

Carlisle says he hopes the school’s new medical school will address the lack of private practice doctors in the immediate Watts/ Willowbrook community. The Association of American Medical Colleges report only 5 percent of doctors in the United States are Black.