To Be Young, A Doctor And Black: Overcoming Racial Barriers In Medical Training
Young African American doctors say they hope to change the lack of access to medicine in underserved communities. But many say the system that trains them also alienates them.
Dr. Danielle Hairston grew up in a family that included many role models of what she refers to as Black excellence.
"I had the example of a Black woman pediatrician, so it never occurred to me I couldn't become a doctor," says Hairston, who is now the psychiatry residency director at Howard University, where she herself now trains and mentors young Black doctors.
Yet, she says, she and her Black colleagues are routinely questioned in the hospitals and clinics where they work about their rightful place in the halls of medicine. They're questioned entering the physicians'
