Bloomberg Gives Record $600 Million to Black Universities Medical Schools

“This is a game changer,” said Harry L. Williams, executive director of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which supports historically black colleges. “This is a really significant moment in terms of supporting historically black colleges and universities,” signaling the importance of their impact on communities.

The announcement was the latest in a series of large donations to historically black colleges after years of financial struggles, offering a dramatic escalation of their potential aspirations and influence. The gifts are the largest to date to a historically black college or university.

Earlier this year, Spelman College announced it had received a record $100 million gift from a trustee and his husband, just days after the United Negro College Fund announced a $100 million gift, the largest unrestricted donation ever received by the nonprofit.

In 2020, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin announced they would donate $120 million to be split between Spelman, Morehouse College and a college fund, and author MacKenzie Scott has given more than $800 million to colleges and universities that educate Black, Latino and Native American students. (Scott’s ex-husband, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)

That same year, Bloomberg Philanthropies gave $100 million to four historically black medical schools. In 2021, Bloomberg gave another $6 million to four historically black medical schools to support efforts to get coronavirus vaccines to local communities.

“We have a long way to go to build a nation where every person, regardless of race, has equal access to high-quality health care — and where students of all backgrounds can pursue their dreams,” Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire founder of Bloomberg, a business and financial news company, and Bloomberg Philanthropies, said in a statement.

Addressing health inequities and underrepresentation in the medical field are key challenges, he said. This donation “will empower new generations of Black physicians to create a healthier and more equitable future for our country,” he said.

His gift follows a $1 billion gift from Bloomberg to Johns Hopkins University last month that will make medical school free for most students at the school and increase financial aid for students in nursing, public health and other graduate programs at the school.

The $600 million gift will boost medical schools at Howard in Washington state; Meharry in Nashville; Morehouse in Atlanta; and Charles R. Drew in Los Angeles. It also helps fund the initiative — $5 million of Bloomberg’s endowment will support the creation of the Xavier Ochsner College of Medicine, a new medical school in New Orleans that is a partnership between Xavier University of Louisiana and Ochsner Health, a nonprofit academic health care provider.

As Garnesha Ezediaro, who leads the Greenwood Initiative at Bloomberg Philanthropies, said, there used to be 14 historically black medical schools; with number now reduced to four, the initiative will help launch a fifth at Xavier. “These issues are decades in the making,” she said, and the grant to Xavier, as well as endowment funds for other schools, have the potential to create lasting impact.

Ben Vinson III, president of Howard, said in a written statement that endowment support has been an area of ​​underinvestment for historically black universities, “but today’s gift is an extraordinary expression of confidence in the lasting benefits of such support.”

It’s an investment in the long-term future of the institution, Vinson told The Washington Post. “It’s a very exciting moment.”

Studies show that health outcomes for black patients improve when they are treated by a black primary care physician. But Vinson said that while the population is about 13 percent black, fewer than 6 percent of practicing physicians are black.

“It really comes down to trust,” said James E.K. Hildreth, president of Meharry. “Health care only works when the patient trusts the provider,” he said. “That was really important during the pandemic when four black medical schools were called upon to engage minority communities, because trust was a huge factor in vaccine acceptance.”

Meharry plans to increase enrollment and scholarships by training more doctors and allowing graduates to work in high-demand areas such as primary care and pediatrics. The funding will help students financially so they don’t feel pressured to pursue higher-salary specialties because they are burdened with so much student loan debt, Hildreth explained.

“We want to continue our tradition of educating primarily primary care physicians who choose to serve the underserved,” he said. “That’s a legacy we’re very proud of,” and this gift will allow them to expand on that.

He added that the donation to the four schools “will have an impact for an entire generation.”