Ohio State Medical School ranks second highest in the country in representation of African American students

By: Ambar Javier

Corey Thompson, a 3rd year at The Ohio State College of Medicine, spends his days trying to figure out where he fits into the medical world through clinical rotations. 

As of May 2019, The Ohio State College of Medicine ranked second highest in representation of African American students according to the U.S. News and World Report. 

“I had 17 black males in my class and around that many females as well. We kind of kept that vibe going to where, percentage wise, we’re now second in the nation,” Thompson explained. 

He was deciding between attending Howard University College of Medicine and The Ohio State College of Medicine when Dr. Quinn Capers, the Dean of Admissions at The Ohio State College of Medicine at the time, shared his future visions for the school with him. 

“He talked to me about what he’s trying to build here, the culture that he is trying to create as Dean of Admissions and that I would not be alone here. He was right.”

African American students make up 12.6% of the student population at The Ohio State College of Medicine, making them a close second to The University of Chicago’s College of Medicine which ranks number one with 14.6% of African American students.  

Although Dr. Quinn Capers, Professor of Medicine and Vice Dean of Faculty at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, is proud of the work accomplished in the past few years to increase the presence of African American students on campus, he expressed that there is still much more work to be done. 

“We know that when we have more black male physicians that our black patients are better taken care of,” he says. “Patients from underserved and disadvantaged backgrounds are better taken care of, and we learn from others as others learn from us so even physicians that we work with learn a little bit about black men that they can take to their patient populations.”

He explains that black men are going to college, but less and less of them are choosing to be physicians and applying to medical schools, which could potentially lead to a shortage in the number of black physicians.

As the new Vice Dean of Faculty at The Ohio State College of Medicine, Dr. Capers hopes to increase black representation within the faculty as well. 

One way he has made an effort to develop a support system is by hosting a quarterly round table to which he invites faculty, students, attendings, and even pre-medical students, all black males, to remind them that they are all in this together. 

“For me it was really important that I was at a place where I didn’t feel that imposter syndrome that everybody talks about where like I didn’t want to be the only black dude or one of like three,” Thompson said. 

Thompson is now the director and one of the founders of Heads Up, or Health Education and Development Services for Underprivileged Populations. It’s a program that allows Columbus children to explore and learn about the medical field while encouraging them to consider being doctors one day.