Note from the Editor

This spring, we are pleased to publish both the regular issue of JHCPU and a supplemental issue sponsored by the Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF). The APIAHF works with communities to advance health equity for Asians and Pacific Islanders in the U.S. by means of scholarship, community mobilization, and policy advocacy. Their supplement brings together strong research articles and more descriptive reports of innovative programs; it opens with columns on an Asian American leader most famous for his work for the federal government, Dr. Howard K. Koh, and another fascinating piece on the historical development of sound population health data for AA/PIs over the last 30 years.

The regular issue opens with an ACU Column on making social determinants of health a part of routine primary care screening. Next, Solberg and Freund describe their experiences teaching bioethics at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

Having mentioned Solberg and Freund’s article, we have a chance to draw attention to a recent New England Journal of Medicine Perspective article,¹ where it is noted that

The country’s traditionally black medical colleges—Howard, Meharry, and Morehouse—continue to graduate a disproportionate number of black medical students. In 2012, there were just 517 black men among the more than 20,000 graduating students at U.S. medical schools. … Black medical students are more than twice as likely as white students to express a desire to care for underserved communities of color. Our inability to recruit black men into medicine is alarming, given the urgency of racial health care disparities in the United States. p. 1088

With the authors of this piece, we celebrate the achievements of these three HBCU medical schools,² and challenge other medical schools nationwide to admit, educate, and train more Black students—women as well as men—at least to the point where their proportion among all U.S. physicians is on a par with the proportion of citizens of the United States who are Black. (In 2009, 3.8% of U.S. physicians identified themselves as non-Hispanic Black,³ while in 2013 13.2% of the U.S. population identified as Black or African American in the U.S. Census.⁴)

Our regular issue continues with articles organized according to three themes: Epidemiology and Clinical Care; Refugee, Immigrant, International, and LEP (limited English proficiency) Populations; and Health Policy. We hope that all of these works contribute to the national goal of health equity for all.