Giving Compass' Take:

• MiMentor recently joined forces with Latino Physicians of California to collaborate on a mentorship program that will help prospective underrepresented medical students.

• How will increasing the number of Latino medical mentors help improve public health incomes of communities of color? How can donors support and expand diversity initiatives? 

• Read about other medical programs helping the Latino community. 

“Since 2000, the number of Latino medical school applicants has increased, but the acceptance rate has not risen at the same pace — we’re striving to change that,” said Lisa Montes, MD, pediatrician, Southern California Permanente Medical Group. Dr. Montes is a MiMentor mentor, and vice president, Alliance in Mentorships, a nonprofit organization that fundraises and supports MiMentor.

To help increase Latino medical school applicants in Southern California, MiMentor recently joined forces with Latino Physicians of California — a nonprofit group that supports current and future Latino physicians through education, advocacy and health policy for health equity.

With the aid of a $50,000 community health grant from Kaiser Permanente Southern California, LPOC and MiMentor are expanding the MSR series beyond the greater Los Angeles area to include Bakersfield and Orange County. The Kaiser Permanente partnership enables LPOC and MiMentor to recruit and train more motivated mentors to become knowledgeable about the medical school application process in today’s digital age and effectively counsel underrepresented students in medicine.

To help prepare pre-health cohorts for 2019-2020 and beyond, LPOC and MiMentor will hold a free “Mentor Advisor Workshop” in September in Los Angeles and Bakersfield. Prospective physician mentors, as well as current residents and medical students, are encouraged to attend the workshop. Continuing medical education credit for the event is pending approval.

The disparity between the number of Latino physicians in the United States relative to the number of Latinos in the general population is significant. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2016 the Hispanic population represented about 17 percent of the nation’s population — making people of Hispanic origin the country’s largest ethnic minority. By 2060, the Census Bureau projects that Hispanic people will comprise nearly 30 percent of the U.S. population.

Read the full article about boosting the number of Latino doctors at Kaiser Permanente.