Race-neutral admission approaches: Challenges and opportunities for medical schools.

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger affirmed the use of narrowly tailored, race-conscious admission programs by institutions of higher education that find that the benefits derived from diversity rise to a compelling interest. The rulings also required institutions that use race-conscious admission programs to explore whether the results of such programs could be met through race-neutral alternatives. In this article, the authors review relevant literature in the context of medical education and summarize the existing information about race-neutral alternatives and the challenges and opportunities in implementing them, with the goal of encouraging further research that will inform medical school admission policies. The authors argue that although undergraduate and graduate institutions across the nation are pursuing the goal of diversity within the guidelines set forth by the Court, there is too little known about how race-neutral alternatives to race-conscious admission policies can be effective in promoting diversity. They conclude that although certain approaches show promise, medical schools--as they continue to employ race-conscious admission policies to achieve the benefits of diversity--must take advantage of their compliance with the Court's decision to investigate whether race-neutral approaches can contribute to the diversity of medical school classes.

3000 by 2000 and beyond: next steps for promoting diversity in the health professions.

In 1991, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) launched a national campaign to enroll 3,000 underrepresented minority students in medical school by the year 2000. (The AAMC defined underrepresented minorities as blacks, Mexican Americans, mainland Puerto Ricans, and Native Americans, which includes American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians.*) The initiative, named Project 3000 by 2000, focused on education-pipeline interventions. Although the project did not meet its numeric goal, in large part because of court decisions in several regions of the country that hampered affirmative action programs, Project 3000 by 2000 did have a number of important successes. At a time when there is a need to develop new and creative ways to promote diversity in health professions education, there are a number of lessons to be learned from this project. Large-scale national campaigns serve an extremely useful purpose in promoting diversity in the health professions. And for these campaigns to be successful, it is important that the health professions work together to coordinate their activities and share their resources to ensure that health professions close the diversity gap in the twenty-first century.