Why the U.S. medical field is pushing for more Black doctors

As a child, 40-year-old Dontal Johnson dreamed of becoming a doctor, but never saw himself represented in the profession. “I had never seen a Black doctor growing up, and one of the crazier things is I never saw a Black doctor until I hit college,” Johnson said. Johnson decided to apply to medical schools in Texas, but when a friend told him about a potential school in Nashville, Tennessee, full of Black students, he was in disbelief. “He started describing a place of people that looked like me that were dentists, doctors, scientists. So I went home that night. It was still — I had dialup internet — so I had to wait for it to pop up. And then these photo stills came across from Meharry, and I applied that night at maybe like 1 or 2 a.m.” After graduating from Meharry Medical College — a historically Black institution — he decided to stay in the community, and is now a pediatrician and professor there. “I think one of the things that’s really coming to light, that patient population of African Americans and how systemic racism, how history, how the health care profession overall has not always been there...