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Morgan State University is slated to make history by becoming the first HBCU to open a medical school in 45 years, according to CBS.
“Let’s do this for Baltimore, lets do this for our community,” Dr. John Sealey, MSU’s Founding Dean of the proposed College of Osteopathic Medicine, said.
The university partnered with Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital to launch the for-profit, private medical school that will be home to 700 students and 150 employees.
MSU’s goal is to provide more opportunities to minority students in the STEM field. They also want to contribute to the low percentage of Black medical school graduates (9.8%)
“If you want to be a doctor there, you’re going to be a doctor there,” Sealey said. “That’s the whole aspect of it. You see it, you dream it, and you do it.”
St. Agnes’ Chief Medical Officer, Jon D’Souza, said, “We want to make sure we’re doing our part in training that next generation and we also want to make sure that the physicians we’re training are coming from the community they’re going to serve.”
In addition to the small amount of Black medical students, D’Souza said the new medical school would help with the shortage of doctors.
“There’s a shortage in the next 10 years, anywhere between 35,000 to 1230,000 physicians in the United States of America,” D’Souza said. “We want to make sure that the physicians we’re training are coming from the community they’re going to serve.”
He added, “It’s going to have a strong emphasis on population health. That means we don’t just fix a problem when it becomes a medical issue, we work within communities to prevent problems.”
The medical school is set to open sometime in 2024.
MSU is one of the four HBCUs in Maryland. The other Maryland-based HBCUs include Coppin State, Bowie State, and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. There are also 16 HBCUs with medical schools including Howard University, Meharry Medical College, Tuskegee University and FAMU.