Historically Black Schools of Medicine Radiology Residency Programs: Contributions and Lessons Learned

Introduction: Black radiologists remain significantly underrepresented in the radiology workforce, despite a 1973 plea by Black radiologists of the National Medical Association to increase training programs for minority radiologists.

Objective: The authors provide a qualitative narrative that highlights the radiology residency programs of three historically Black schools of medicine (HBSOM) in the U.S., their contributions, and lessons learned from their closure.

Methods: Data from public repositories, interviews, and conversations were conflated to chronicle significant events and establish a timeline during these residency programs' existence.

Results: Radiology residencies at Howard University School of Medicine (1945), Meharry Medical College (1949), and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science (1972) were established to train Black doctors to treat communities of color. These programs provided care to underserved and under-resourced areas of the country, where inequitable health care fueled a legacy of poor health outcomes. These radiology residency programs collapsed under the weight of suboptimal funding, strapped capital budgets, attrition of faculty, a declining hospital patient census, and failure to maintain other residency specialty programs.` CONCLUSION: Understanding the history and impact of these programs, and of their closure, can be leveraged to develop strategies to increase the representation of racial and ethnic minorities in radiology. Possible reinstatement, with appropriate allocation of resources and creation of intentional policies to ensure sustained success, merits further investigation and may be a pathway to achieve optimal representation.