Morehouse School of Medicine Receives Record Donation to an HBCU

By Helena Oliviero

The largest-ever gift for historically Black colleges and universities was announced Tuesday by Michael R. Bloomberg’s philanthropic organization: $600 million will be divided among the country’s four HBCU medical schools, which includes Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta.

The gift is intended to address systemic underinvestment in Black institutions and communities by helping diversify the next generation of doctors, according to the announcement from Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Morehouse School of Medicine will receive $175 million — the largest single donation the school has ever received.

The new funding will more than double three of the four medical schools’ endowments including that of Morehouse School of Medicine — which currently has an endowment of $130 million, built up over the past 50 years since its founding.

The gift will also allow more flexibility for Morehouse School of Medicine compared to its current endowment, which has been largely funded the National Institutes of Health and mostly tied to specific areas of research.

The massive gift is also expected to tackle the medical school’s rising costs and associated student debt, which can be a massive difficulty for aspiring doctors. Black men and women graduating from medical school are more likely to incur the most debt than other racial and ethnic groups.

While the exact details of how the money will be used are still being worked out, Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, President and CEO of Morehouse School of Medicine, said in an interview she anticipates a majority will go toward student scholarships. She said Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies were “very clear” about debt reduction and how important it is to ease the financial burden of medical students. And she added, “We agree with them on this.”

But Dr. Montgomery Rice said she is also hoping to use some of the money to pay for faculty positions and innovative programs and coursework at the medical school.

“This is a game changer for Morehouse School of Medicine,” said Dr. Montgomery Rice. “It really does allow us to fortify our commitment to help build a future where the community has access to quality care, and it also really does demonstrate you can make investments with institutions and it can lead to financial sustainability.”

Three other historically Black medical schools will also benefit. Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C. and Meharry Medical College in Nashville will also receive $175 million each. Charles R. Drew University of Medicine & Science in South Los Angeles will receive $75 million. Funding levels were determined by current class size and anticipated growth.

Bloomberg Philanthropies also said it would provide “seed funding” of $5 million to support the creation of the Xavier Ochsner College of Medicine, a new medical school in New Orleans.

It is not clear if the money will be given to the institutions in one lump some or over several years.

Bloomberg Philanthropies’ investment is part of its Greenwood Initiative, which called the donation an effort that “seeks to advance racial wealth equity including addressing systemic underinvestment in Black institutions and communities.”

“We have much more to do to build a country where every person, regardless of race, has equal access to quality health care – and where students from all backgrounds can pursue their dreams,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and Bloomberg financial and media companies, in a press release. He is also the former mayor of New York City.

Increasing the diversity of the medical workforce is considered key to ending deeply entrenched racial health disparities.

Research has shown that Black people have better health outcomes and receive medical care more frequently when they are treated by Black physicians. Black patients are 34% more likely to receive preventative care if seen by Black doctors. Yet, data shows that while the U.S. population is 13% Black, only 7% of medical school graduates and less than 6% of all practicing doctors are Black.

In Georgia, about a third of the population — or 30% — is Black.

A study last year found Black people in counties with more Black primary care physicians live longer. The study found that Black residents in counties with more Black physicians — whether or not they actually see those doctors — had lower mortality from all causes and showed that these counties had lower disparities in mortality rates between Black and white residents. The finding of longer life expectancy persisted even in counties with a single Black physician.

“That a single Black physician in a county can have an impact on an entire population’s mortality, it’s stunningly overwhelming,” Monica Peek, a primary care physician and health equity researcher at UChicago Medicine who wrote an editorial accompanying the study, told STAT News, a health, medicine and science outlet. “It validates what people in health equity have been saying about all the ways Black physicians are important, but to see the impact at the population level is astonishing.”

The four historically Black medical schools alone graduate around half of all Black doctors. At Morehouse School of Medicine between 75 and 95 students graduate with a medical degree annually. About 100 additional students graduate from other programs including their physician assistant program and Master of Science in neuroscience.

Montgomery Rice said the institution’s goal is to grow the number of students entering medical school to 225 over the next decade.

Across both public and private institutions, HBCUs have much smaller endowments than non-HBCUs. The endowment for public HBCUs was about 50% of the endowment for public non-HBCUs in 2021. The gap is larger at private institutions, where the average HBCU endowment per full time student is about 21% of non-HBCUs.

“Addressing health disparities and underrepresentation in the medical field are critical challenges and Bloomberg Philanthropies is dedicated to making a difference,” Bloomberg said in his statement. “By building on our previous support, this gift will empower new generations of Black doctors to create a healthier and more equitable future for our country.”

In 2020, Bloomberg Philanthropies gave $100 million to the four historically Black medical schools, which at the time was the largest philanthropic gift from a single donor to these institutions. Morehouse School of Medicine received about $26 million. Montgomery Rice said about 285 students at Morehouse School of Medicine received on average about $100,000 to help ease the burden of college debt.

The 2020 gift from Bloomberg Philanthropies also helped to reduce the student debt of nearly 1,000 future Black doctors. More than 50% of the graduates benefiting from the support selected primary care specialties including internal medicine, pediatrics and OB/GYN. The top non-primary care areas chosen were emergency medicine and psychiatry. Additionally, many of the graduates opted to work in underserved communities, urban communities, and public hospitals, according to Bloomberg Philanthropies.

In 2021, Bloomberg Philanthropies gave an additional $6 million to the four historically Black medical schools to expand their efforts to provide access to COVID-19 vaccines to underserved populations in their local communities.