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Health giant Kaiser Permanente will open a new medical school in 2019 and one of its goals will be to add diversity to the country’s physicians, especially in the state of California. The Oakland-based healthcare system, which combines a nonprofit insurance plan with operating 38 hospitals across the country, specializes in integrated care encouraging doctors to work in teams and use technology to control costs and give patients more effective coordinated care.
The company has made a commitment to recruit more minority students, especially Latinos, and teach doctors how to care for a diverse patient population such as is present in states like California. Currently, many ethnic groups are underrepresented in medical schools. This has led to concerns that doctors might struggle in the future to treat some minority groups, including Latinos, which currently make up 17% of the U.S. population.
According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, only 9% of current medical students are Latinos. In California, Latinos are currently the largest ethnic group with over 38% of the population, but in the University of California medical schools, only 12% of the 2014 class were Latinos. At the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, Latinos represented only 8%.
Nearly 8 million Californians are currently enrolled in Kaiser health plans. The location and size of Kaiser Permanente’s new medical school have not yet been determined.
By The Numbers
25.1
percent
of Latinos remain without health insurance coverage
