The U.S. has a shortage of Black doctors. Stony Brook University's medical school is trying to change that.
Dr. Leon McDougle, the first Black tenured professor at Ohio State University's Department of Family and Community Medicine, speaks to students at Stony Brook University Renaissance School of Medicine's fourth annual youth summit Thursday. Credit: Newsday/John Paraskevas
For as long as he can remember, Stony Brook University medical student Ezekiel Powdar has known he wanted to be a doctor.
But the journey from being the kid people in his Brooklyn hometown would causally refer to as to "doctor," through the halls of academia to now donning a white coat, has been long. There have been times when he was homeless, sold sneakers to support himself and took a job as a scribe at an urgent care facility — all before entering medical school last year in his 30s.
“So, you know, I had to take a bit of a longer path to ultimately get into medical school,” said Powdar, who currently lives in Coram.
Powdar, who is Black, was one of several medical students, clinicians, staff members and community leaders who participated on Thursday in Stony Brook University's Renaissance School of Medicine fourth annual youth summit, held in collaboration with the university's Black Men in White Coats chapter.
The goal of the event was to inspire roughly 500 students from districts such as Uniondale, Half Hollow Hills and Central Islip to pursue health care careers, as the nation faces a shortage of Black physicians.
“I see everyone in here becoming a health care provider: a researcher, a physician, nurse, nurse assistant,” Dr. Leon McDougle, the first Black tenured professor at Ohio State University's Department of Family and Community Medicine, told students.
“We need you,” he later said.
Fewer Black medical students
The number of Black students who matriculated at a U.S. medical school has steadily declined, from about 2,200 in 2021-22 to roughly 1,670 by 2024-25, the Association of American Medical Colleges found. Black physicians make up roughly 5% of medical doctors in the U.S., according to data from the organization.
Experts point to a confluence of factors contributing to the decrease, including the cost of medical school tuition, lack of mentorship, gaps in K-12 education and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning the use of race as a factor in college admissions.
Increasing the numbers of Black doctors, organizers of the youth summit said, could help reduce discrimination in health care and improve patient treatment.
Dr. Jedan Phillips, an associate dean at the Renaissance School of Medicine, said exposure is critical to encouraging more Black students to pursue medicine. He said the school has made an effort to volunteer at local schools and provide community health counseling in hopes of aspiring future doctors.
“The biggest thing is making...individuals or the young people feel that, ‘I can make it, even though it doesn't look like I've got the perfect scenario,’ ” he said.
Planting the seeds
At Thursday's event, students got an inside look at the range of possible medical careers.
For some students, that meant trying on medical students' white coats. Others learned the ins and outs of CPR or practiced with robotic surgery tools.
With the help of a training mannequin, Juliet Farquharson, 8, from White Plains, gets instruction on how to administer CPR. Credit: Newsday/John Paraskevas
Uniondale High School students Amarieh Joseph and Ihechukwu Iwuoha, both 16, said they want to be nurses.
Iwuoha, who is from Nigeria, believes one of the difficulties she will face is coming from an immigrant background.
“But I feel like I can overcome those challenges,” Iwuoha said.
Joseph, meanwhile, said her battle with sickle cell disease inspired her career pursuit — but it has also made attending school more difficult at times.
For Powdar, now 32, the purpose of the event was to plant seeds — The same ones that his mother planted when she would tell everyone that her son was going to be a doctor, while selling school fundraising candy.
Those seeds took root as he noticed that some relatives would travel out of his neighborhood because they felt like they couldn’t get good health care within the community. In the future, he hopes being a physician benefits his community, so that people don’t feel that they must leave to get access to quality care.
“I'd like to really be in the community, reestablish community, build community and kind of like rebuild that faith that was lost,” he said.
Tiffany Cusaac-Smith is a general assignment reporter for Newsday. She previously worked at USA TODAY and is an alum of Howard University.
