Rice broke barriers as the first woman leader at two HBCU medical schools, and she’s committed to health equity and training more Black doctors.
by Donnell Suggs, The Atlanta Voice
There are only four Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) medical schools in the United States — Morehouse School of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, Howard University College of Medicine, and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.
Valerie Montgomery Rice has played a significant role at two of them. She’s not just the sixth president of Morehouse School of Medicine; she’s the first woman to run it. And over at Meharry Medical College in Nashville? She was the dean of the School of Medicine and senior vice President of health affairs during her tenure.
But Montgomery Rice isn’t just about accolades and making history. She’s fighting health disparities and pushing for more Black physicians in communities that need them most. For example, Black women are three to four times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than white women. Rice is working to move the needle by training more Black physicians and placing them in underserved communities.
“We understand it matters who we educate and train in order to eliminate health disparities,” Montgomery Rice says. “The world needs what we do best even more now. Unfortunately, we have seen a widening in the gap between health outcomes such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease with more Black and Brown people being diagnosed and undertreated.”
Montgomery Rice’s connection to HBCUs began in 2000 when she became the founding director of the Center for Women’s Health Research at Meharry Medical College, which was founded in 1876.
Montgomery Rice initially “said no” to the job, but the recruiter, the dean of the medical school at that time, reminded her of her responsibility as a Black physician. So Montgomery Rice headed to Nashville where she found, “the most…
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