Federal Officials Claim Black Doctors Are So Good That Blacks Live Longer Just By Living In The Same County As One

Federal employees funded by a government “equity” office claim in a new study that black doctors are so crucial that having one merely exist in a county is enough to raise the life expectancy of blacks in that entire county.

The study was published Friday on the website of JAMA, of the Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the nation’s most prestigious medical journals. It was authored by officials with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the US Department of Health and Human Services, with funding from HRSA’s Office of Health Equity, “administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education through an interagency agreement between the US Department of Energy and HRSA.”

The premise of the study is that there should be more black doctors because in counties where more doctors are black, the average black person lives an extra 30 days—even though there is no evidence that most black residents were ever even treated by the doctor.

The medical journal uses the language of critical race theory and argues that “race is a social construct” and that “racial differences frequently observed in population health outcomes studies are generally considered to result from fixable health system factors, such as differences in the availability and quality of care.” Other studies, by contrast, have found massive differences in individual characteristics that impact lifespans, with the vast majority of black women being overweight, for example.

“Race as a study variable, in and of itself, is not considered a biological determinant of health outcomes; rather, it is a social construct that serves as a proxy measure for the structural inequities inherent in our society, and specifically in the health system,” it said.

The study appears to argue for segregation, which it calls “physician-patient race concordance.”

“Some Black patients may prefer to seek care from racially concordant physicians due in part to the value placed on certain shared aspects of culture and experience,” it said.

The suggestion that black doctors are preferable to others and can measurably extend average lifespans in an entire county is in contrast to objective scientific literature on their qualifications. Black applicants to medical schools have the lowest MCAT scores and the lowest GPAs of any group. A 2022 study found that black doctors had the lowest scores on exams given to family medicine residents.

Despite the methodological weaknesses and tiny change in life expectancy of the study, a science news outlet covered it breathlessly, writing “The new 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,” STAT News quoted Monica Peek, a “primary care physician and health equity researcher at UChicago Medicine,” as saying.

Michael Dill, the director of workforce studies at the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC), was also a co-author, and was clear that the study aims to advocate for more affirmative action.  “This is adding to the case for a more diverse physician workforce,” he said. “What else could you ask for?”

The lead author, John Snyder, said of polices that pass more blacks through medical school, regardless of performance: “Arguably we’ve found a path forward for closing those disparities.”

The AAMC’s own data shows that affirmative action in medical schools is rampant and results in people becoming doctors who otherwise never would have been permitted to because of their scores: A black doctor with a modest MCAT score of 27-29 had an 81% chance of being admitted to medical school, while an Asian with the same score had only a 20% chance and a white a 29% chance.

The federal officials and medical college official seem to be using the study to establish benefits of diversity out of fear that the Supreme Court could bar affirmative action in academic admissions.

On Twitter, the STAT News author, Usha Lee McFarling, who says she is a Pulitzer winner, said that “this study shows benefit merely from the presence of Black docs. Why? One thought is counties where Black doctors practice may in general be more supportive of Black lives.”

She said that could be because black doctors are willing to “politically advocate for health.”

She complained that “Black doctors continue to be pushed out of training, especially in elite specialties, before they finish, removing them from the workforce and the fields they once dreamed of entering,” referring to trainees being flunked by their supervisors because they could pose a threat to the safety of future patients.

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