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. Morehouse currently has an endowment of $130 million, built up over the past 50 years since its founding.
The massive gift is expected to tackle the medical school’s rising costs and associated student debt, which can be a difficulty for aspiring doctors. Black men and women graduating from medical school are more likely to have 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 most of the gift will go toward student scholarships. She said Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies were “very clear” about wanting to reduce medical student debt. And she added, “We agree with them on this.”
But 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.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
“This is a game changer for Morehouse School of Medicine,” said 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 sum or over several years.
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Bloomberg Philanthropies’ investment is part of its Greenwood Initiative. Its founder Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City who started financial and media companies, announced the gift Tuesday during the annual convention for the National Medical Association, which represents and advocates for Black physicians. Montgomery Rice was in attendance.
“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,” Bloomberg said in a press release.
Keana Murray, a fourth-year Morehouse medical student from Detroit, said the gift has been the talk of the Atlanta campus all day. Her phone has been ringing nonstop.
Murray, 30, president of the student government association, said, “Anything that increases Black and brown people in the healthcare field is just astounding.” The donation, no matter what it ultimately funds, also helps to address historic funding inequities for HBCUs, she said. ”It’s not something that’s going to be fixed overnight, but we’re heading in the right direction. And I think it gives Black and brown students, medical students, scientists, PA students, nursing students — it gives them a fighting chance to actually start to level that playing field,” she said.
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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 preventive 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.
Credit: Michael Martin
Credit: Michael Martin
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.
Garnesha Ezediaro, who leads the Greenwood Initiative, said the $600 million gift is about growing the HBCU schools’ endowments to provide financial stability. That strengthens their capacity to respond to factors such as rising research and tuition costs, she said, in a Tuesday interview.
“They’re so valuable in their mission and what they do to produce Black doctors,” she said.
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 received on average about $100,000 to ease the burden of college debt.
In total, the 2020 gift 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. Additionally, many graduates opted to work in underserved communities, urban communities and public hospitals, according to Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Ezediaro said that debt-reduction program produced “amazing results” and boosted graduation rates.
“The thing that we were really surprised by and encouraged by was the fact that the schools were able to attract new funders and leverage our gift to fundraise,” she said.
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.
Here are some recent major donations and gifts to some of Georgia’s private HBCUs
May 2019: Billionaire investor Robert F. Smith agreed to pay the student loan debt for Morehouse College’s entire graduating class. The gift totaled $34 million.
June 2020: Netflix executive chairman Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, gave $120 million combined to the UNCF, Morehouse and Spelman colleges.
July 2020: Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave $20 million each to Morehouse and Spelman. Scott made a $15 million donation in December 2020 to Clark Atlanta University.
September 2020: Bloomberg Philanthropies announced a $26.3 million gift to Morehouse School of Medicine.
January 2024: Spelman College trustee Ronda Stryker and her husband William Johnston gave Spelman College a $100 million gift, which it said at that time was the largest single donation ever to an HBCU.
