STS 2022 Day 1 — Today at 10:00 a.m. ET, the STS 58th Annual Meeting will officially commence with a welcome from STS President Sean C. Grondin, MD, MPH, FRCSC, and the Vivien T. Thomas Lecture by Henri R. Ford, MD, MHA.
Dr. Ford is a Haitian-American pediatric surgeon who serves as dean of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Florida. In 1997, Dr. Ford made his first trip back to Haiti since his family fled the government of François Duvalier to settle in Brooklyn when he was 13 years old.
Appalled by the impoverished conditions and scarce resources at Haitian medical centers, he made multiple return visits to volunteer his services, including performing emergency procedures for injured children at field facilities in the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake.
In today’s lecture, Dr. Ford will illustrate how disparities among black and Latinx populations in the United States have a precipitous effect on medicine—academic medicine in particular—and how solutions to existing health disparities will require a more racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse research workforce.
Attendees will see how the cultural mindsets of trainee physicians influence their practice roles in the community—for example, underrepresented minority physicians are more likely to practice primary care, and more likely to work in underserved or impoverished areas.
When medical students were asked the likelihood of them practicing in an underserved area, Dr. Ford notes, 55% of black students responded in the affirmative, compared with 36% of Latinx students, 34% of indigenous students, and only 21% of white students.
Dr. Ford also will demonstrate how racial disparities are dragging down efforts to address impending shortages of physicians in various specialties, and how the proportion of black and Latinx medical school graduates are not keeping up with the growth in population. He will present compelling statistics that reveal how education opportunities—afforded and missed—from childhood onward can have a cumulative effect on an individual’s success.
Finally, he’ll describe the vast power of great role models, mentorship, and sponsorship in promoting health equity and building a diverse and gifted workforce. “I’m convinced that we will attract the brightest talent to the field of surgery, especially thoracic surgery,” Dr. Ford said.
This lecture is named for Vivien T. Thomas, a black laboratory supervisor who worked as part of the team that developed the procedure used during the landmark 1944 “blue baby” operation. Thomas, despite his essential role in pioneering techniques at Johns Hopkins University, at the time was hired and paid as a janitor and not allowed to use the main entrance.
It's not too late to register for STS 2022, now an all-virtual experience, and to join colleagues for this and other thought-provoking lectures, never-before-seen science and technology, and invaluable discussions with colleagues at sts.org/annualmeeting.