On May 29th, 2020, four days after the killing of George Floyd, we received a message from a Black medical student at the Penn State College of Medicine on the Hershey campus. She said she was scared. The administration, she told us, hadnt offered her any support. She was finding it hard to focus.

Her message prompted a long overdue conversation. After years of practicing medicine at the Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center campus, we were embarrassed to discover how little we knew about just how different the experience of medical school was for Black students.

Our friend told us she constantly felt invisible because white attending physicians routinely address white students. She said white students in class would consistently talk over her. As two white medical professionals, we were appalled.

Many of these concerns were echoed through a series of town hall meetings that were eventually called for Hershey campus students and faculty to address tensions that grew as our campus, like the rest of the country, grappled with the ugly revelations that followed George Floyds killing.

Some of the things we heard at these meetings were shocking. One Black medical student said she had been insulted by a physician during hospital rounds.

Some of the things we heard at these meetings were shocking. One Black medical student recalled being deeply offended by a physician who, intentionally or not, used a blatant racial slur in asking her a question during hospital rounds. Another asked why there are so few Black students and faculty on campus, as well as for specific plans and goal to move towards racial equity.

Curious to know just how big a racial disparity there was, we looked for statistics on the makeup of the medical student classes at Hershey.

National data shows that Black medical students comprised 6.2 percent of the student body in medical schools across the U.S. in 2015, 6.4 percent in 2016, 6.8 percent in 2017, 7.1 percent in 2018, and 7.3 percent in 2019 admission years.

Penn States Hershey campus says that it values diversity and that it is committed to educating students, from all backgrounds, who also reflect our nations demographics.

But proof of this commitment turned out to be impossible to find.

While there appears to be a demonstrable lack of Black students on campus, no statistics were publicly available for the Penn State College of Medicine.

Statistics show an inexcusable disparity in the medical profession nationally.

While Blacks comprise 13.4 percent of the general population (US official Census for July of 2019) only 5 percent of practicing US physicians are Black (Association of American Medical Colleges, 2018 report).

Projecting from the current slow growth in the percentage of Black medical students, it will take over 40 years to reach an equitable representation. And since an equitable representation is a matter of justice, it will take 40 years for Black medical professionals to attain justice.

Consequences of this painfully slow track to justice are enormous.

Equitable representation has shown to lead to better health outcomes in Black patients. Causes behind African American distrust of white physicians have been well documented by the rich history of medical mistreatment.

The most frequently cited example is the Tuskegee experiment where Black men with syphilis were observed untreated starting in 1932 and were finally told about their condition when this unethical experimentation was exposed in 1979.

More recent investigations demonstrated that disproportionately more Black patients are enrolled in risky no-consent studies that lack personal benefits for the enrolled subjects. At the same time, Black patients are under-represented in studies of new promising drugs. This robs them of an opportunity to experience effective new medication for cancers and other conditions that would not be available outside the study protocols.

Increasing the percentage of Black doctors in the United States is important for the sake of restoring a sense of trust in the healthcare system among African Americans and for the future of the country as a whole. The evidence supports the conclusion that this increase will be followed by an improvement in health outcomes.

The Penn State Health websites diversity section banner shows three happy diverse faces: Our goal is to be best in class in increasing the diversity of our students and workforce, it reads.

But we found a different reality. We, as white allies, are in the best position to persuade the institution to be transparent on race statistics, act deliberately, and get on the fast track to justice.

Pamela Tulchinsky is a medical technologist. Her husband, Mark Tulchinsky, MD, is Asst. Director of Nuclear Medicine at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center where he practices and teaches radiology and medicine. He is current Vice President of the American College of Nuclear Medicine.

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Town halls at Penn State College of Medicine reveal the same racial tensions that plague the nation | Opinion - pennlive.com