TAFP member organizes first-ever minority medical student conference

This past September, 29 minority medical students from across the country gathered in San Antonio to discuss minority health and family practice issues at the Family Practice Minority Medical Student Conference. The first of its kind, this two-day meeting featured lectures on topics ranging from community leadership to methods for handling cultural differences in health care. Between the lectures, attendees had a chance to tour Christus Santa Rosa Hospital, headquarters for most of the conference, and meet in group discussion sessions with residents and faculty of the hospital’s family practice residency program to get tips on applying to residency and succeeding in medical school.

Conference organizer, Sandra Guerra-Cantu, MD, left, with Joseph A. Lopez, MD and keynote speaker, Elena Rios, MD. 

The crowd was filled with bright faces from many different cultures—Mexican American, Native American, Indian, and African American, to name the most prominent—and they came from as far away as Oregon, Virginia, Florida, Pennsylvania and Hawaii. Utah, California, Wisconsin, Alabama and Missouri were also represented as was Texas, of course, and the speakers were as diverse as the attendees. Among them all was the unifying desire to go back to their communities and help the under-served. Since the conference was held in South Texas, program coordinators used border health issues and the plight of the Hispanic population as a model to describe minority health issues in all populations.  

The idea for the conference first came to its founder and director, Sandra Guerra-Cantu, M.D., when she began her own search for a residency program. Now a second-year resident at Christus Santa Rosa, she says she had a difficult time conveying her desire to join a program that served a Hispanic population to her mostly white medical school faculty. “They kept saying, ‘Why don’t you think about Dallas, or what about Houston,” she says. “I saw then there was a need to bring minority medical students interested in family practice together to be able to give them some role models.”

Keynote speaker Elena Rios, M.D., president of the National Hispanic Medical Association, would agree that role models are a key ingredient in addressing today’s cross-cultural health care needs. When she asked the crowd who among them was the first physician in their family, almost everyone raised a hand. In her presentation, she pointed out that Mexican Americans have much higher rates of disease than white Americans and that Mexican American women have the lowest rate of mammogram testing. “In order to decrease these gaps in our country, we’ve got to understand better how to take care of people from different backgrounds,” she says. She attributes much of this disparity to a lack of minority policy leaders, physicians and researchers, stating that only five percent of the nation’s doctors are Hispanic, and she believes that by building a presence in these areas, America will have better health care for all.

According to the director of the Tallahassee Memorial Family Practice Residency Program and immediate past president of the Florida Academy of Family Physicians, Alma Littles, M.D., “Caring for minority patients and being aware of the cultural differences enhances the physician-patient relationship.” She spoke to the assembled medical students about folk medicine and family remedies that they will probably encounter in their future practices. Many cultures pass down healing treatments involving weeds and herbs, concoctions, ointments and even turpentine, and sometimes patients will use these or see herbalists and folk healers instead of going to their doctors. In her presentation, Littles encouraged the medical students to listen closely to their patients and try to understand why they do this. “If it won’t kill them, I say ‘Just go ahead,’” Littles says, adding, “patients need to have a comfortable relationship with their physicians about these treatments so they will tell their doctors about them.” 

Joseph Lopez, M.D., diplomat to the American Board of Family Practice, spoke on the health status of Mexican Americans, alerting the students that while the United States will soon become the second most populous Spanish-speaking country, one third of all Hispanic people live beneath the poverty level and only 54 percent of Hispanic children graduate from high school. “You have to meet the patients where they are,” Lopez said as he led the group in a discussion on ways to get involved at the local level. He encouraged them to join associations, choose a residency program that serves a minority population and visit with school children to help interest them in medicine.

A recent Mead Johnson Award winner, Guerra-Cantu believes the conference was a huge success. “The students expressed sincere appreciation for the opportunity to find support systems and role models,” she says. “I am hoping this conference becomes an annual event in some fashion.”
–Jonathan Nelson