Major Investments in Historically Black Medical Schools

In August 2024, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced a new $600 million gift to bolster the endowments and support the financial sustainability of the nation’s four Historically Black Medical Schools: Charles R. Drew University of Medicine & Science, Howard University College of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, and Morehouse School of Medicine. An additional $5 million in seed funding was announced to support the creation of the Xavier Ochsner College of Medicine, a new medical school in New Orleans founded by Xavier University of Louisiana, a Historically Black University with a strong track record of sending graduates into the medical field, and Ochsner Health. This gift builds upon Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative’s 2020 gift of $100 million to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which reduced the burden of debt for nearly 1,000 future doctors.

Howard University College of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, and Morehouse School of Medicine each received a gift of $175 million, and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine & Science received $75 million. The new funding will more than double three of the four medical schools’ endowments. Funding levels were determined by current class size and anticipated growth. In addition, the Xavier Ochsner College of Medicine received a $5 million grant.

The funding will fuel the institutions’ commitments to training the next generation of doctors attuned to provide quality medical care within medically underserved communities. It also reflects the Greenwood Initiative’s mission by addressing systemic underinvestment in Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

The four Historically Black Medical Schools alone graduate around half of all Black doctors in the U.S. but have significantly underfunded endowments as a result of systemic funding shortfalls. Since the early 1900’s, a combination of factors — including the impacts of the Flexner report and other discriminatory practices and attitudes — led to the closing of the majority of the Historically Black Medical Schools in the United States.

This new gift builds on earlier investments in these vital institutions. In 2020, Bloomberg Philanthropies gave $100 million — at the time the largest philanthropic gift from a single donor to these institutions — to help reduce the student debt of nearly 1,000 future doctors. More than 50 percent of the graduates who benefited from the support selected primary care specialties including internal medicine, pediatrics, OB/GYN, and the top non-primary care areas chosen were emergency medicine and psychiatry. Additionally, many of the graduates opted to work in underserved communities, urban communities, and public hospitals.

In 2021, Bloomberg Philanthropies gave an additional $6 million to the four schools to expand their efforts providing access to COVID-19 vaccines in their local communities.