What Two New HBCU Medical Schools Can Mean for Poor and Underserved Populations

Two new medical schools are planned at HBCUs (historically Black colleges and universities), one at Xavier University and the other at Morgan State University. The number of Black physicians as of 2021 was 48,248 and according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, an additional 21,000 Black physicians will be needed by 2034 to create a physician workforce that reflects the diversity of the United States. In this Commentary, the authors use prior work on projecting the number of Black medical school graduates from closed HBCUs to approximate the potential numbers of Black graduates from the two newly planned medical schools. Xavier and Morgan State will need to graduate 482 medical students per year for over 20 years to account for one HBCU medical school closed as a result of the 1910 Flexner Report. Projections from Xavier and Morgan State show 3,165 graduates by 2034.