Page 47 - ACTL Journal_Sum24

rural areas with limited access to healthcare, to increase the number of students who will go back and practice in those counties.
Amid all of the legal wrangling surrounding using race as a criterion in school admissions, Morehouse School of Medicine is just a bystander. The school has never used race as one of the criteria for admission; Dr. Montgomery Rice explained that they never had to. Instead, the school uses a formulation they call adversity scores that evaluates applicants by factors such as their geographic location in Georgia, whether the student is from an underserved community, a first-generation medical school student, qualification for Pell Grants during undergrad- uate study, and similar characteristics. The students who rate high scores on this scale are far more likely to go back and practice in those underserved communities. An astounding sixty-eight percent of Morehouse School of Medicine students still choose primary care, the school’s core critical specialty, and almost seventy percent of the students choose to go back and practice in underserved communities. By any measure, this is a remarkable and worthy accomplishment.
When coupled with the understanding that the school gets, on average, 6,800 to 7,000 applications a year for 125 positions in its first-year class – such a ratio of students who return to their underserved communities to practice is nothing short of astonishing. Morehouse can clearly afford to be selective; they could fill every classroom with applicants boasting of perfect GPAs and MCAT scores in the 95th percentile of their gradu- ating class. But Dr. Montgomery Rice and the Medical School take care to align their acceptance criteria with those students whose passion is to go back and practice in an underserved community, or those who want to take up a practice in family medicine, OBGYN, or emergency medicine.
The diversity in the medical school students has, unsurpris- ingly, had an impact in healthcare outcomes for patients. Dr. Montgomery Rice’s team at Morehouse School of Medicine
conducted a study which showed that when a primary care provider goes into a county, the direct and indirect benefit to the local community can reach as much as $1.5 million within three years directly to the economy, and another $2 million in- directly over the next five years. Part of that measurable impact is the businesses that are drawn to a community with robust healthcare and a healthier population. The improved health outcomes can be measured in fewer sick days taken by workers, increased productivity, lower healthcare costs—all elements that contribute to the viability of a community.
On the research front, one of the things that Dr. Montgomery Rice is spearheading at Morehouse School of Medicine is the development of a new genome that will be reflective of not just race, gender, and ethnicity, but geography as well. The genome in use right now for precision medicine is comprised of only 2.4 percent African ancestry – not a high degree of precision for African Americans. Additionally, generations of exposure to environmental toxins and pollution in a community have an impact on patient health and disease progression. Morehouse is looking and being more inclusive of understanding how these tools and opportunities impact individuals everywhere.
Like most things in her life, Dr. Montgomery Rice can trace the arc of her extraordinary career to a final lesson from her mother. She recalls her mother saying often that one of the greatest things in life is to find your life’s work. For Dr. Mont- gomery Rice, the measure of it is how she feels getting up every day to do what she does. While she acknowledges having some bad days, she has yet to wake up and decide “I don’t want to do this anymore.” That’s when, she believes, you start to recog- nize your passion in what you do. For Dr. Montgomery Rice, that passion and purpose centers on diversifying the healthcare workforce and reducing – with a goal to one day eliminating – healthcare outcome disparities.
Anna Green Cross Decatur, GA
SUMMER 2024 JOURNAL 46