Page 8 - IMPACT Campaign Council - Sept. 2020

Garnesha Ezediaro
Program Lead
The Greenwood Initiative
Bloomberg Philanthropies

In December 2018, Mike Bloomberg traveled to Tulsa, Initiative with a $100-million commitment over the next
Oklahoma to announce that the city had won Bloomberg four years to the four historically Black medical schools,
Philanthropies’ Public Art Challenge. The winning pro- which will begin to increase the number of Black doctors
posal honored the neighborhood of Greenwood – once by reducing their debt burden.
known as Black Wall Street, and the site of one of Ameri- This funding will allow the four schools: Meharry Med-
ca’s worst tragedies: The 1921 Tulsa Race massacre. While ical College in Nashville, TN; Howard University College
there, he was moved by the story of how a predominantly of Medicine in Washington, D.C.; Morehouse School of
Black neighborhood had become one of the country’s Medicine in Atlanta, GA; and Charles R. Drew University
most prosperous communities – and was appalled and of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles, CA – to pro-
angered to know that its destruction at the hands of a vide scholarships of up to $100,000 to students currently
racist mob had been whitewashed from history books. enrolled and receiving financial aid. It is the largest-ever
In the spring of 2020, during his campaign for presi- individual philanthropic gift received by the four histori-
dent of the United States, Mike announced an ambitious cally Black medical schools.
plan to accelerate the pace of wealth accumulation for By helping to train the next generation of Black doc-
Black individuals and families and address decades of tors, this investment will save lives and begin to reduce
underinvestment in Black communities. In remembrance the inequities in our health system that the current eco-
of the hundreds killed in Greenwood, and in recognition nomic and public health crisis has underscored.
of how racism writ large has prevented Black families On average, Black people are more likely to die at every
from building wealth, he called the plan The Greenwood stage of life than white people – and that troubling trend
Initiative and returned to Tulsa to lay out its proposals in has continued during this pandemic, with Black people
a speech. suffering the highest death rates from COVID-19.
We have since carried the plan’s objectives over to Due to a number of factors, Black patients overall
Bloomberg Philanthropies, where we’re supporting and have better health outcomes when they are treated by
working with partners and institutions that have a proven Black doctors. Black doctors are also more likely to treat
track record of increasing economic and social mobili- minority patients and practice in medically underserved
ty to fulfill its mission of reducing wealth disparities in communities, which often lack access to quality care
Black communities. in comparison to predominantly white communities.
Reducing the debt burden of Historically However, while the population of the United States is 13
Black Medical School students percent Black only 7 percent of medical school graduates
On September 3, are Black.
2020, Bloomberg By reducing the debt burden of historically Black medi-
Philanthropies an- cal school students, and creating more Black doctors, this
nounced the launch investment will help to save Black lives and reduce health
of The Greenwood problems that limit economic opportunity in Black com-
munities.