The Black Girl Pre-Health Collective hosted its first Black pre-health conference at the Milken Institute School of Public Health on Friday aimed at guiding students interested in health care careers.
The conference hosted discussions and panels centered on improving students’ medical skills and overcoming the challenges Black women face in health fields like a lack of representation and difficulty forming connections with colleagues due to implicit biases. BGPC student leaders said the conference gave Black pre-health students the opportunity to connect with Black professionals in the medical field.
Kayla McQuiller, a sophomore and the programming director for BGPC, said the conference platforms Black female professionals in the medical field to students, as only 2.8 percent of physicians in the United States are Black women. McQuiller said through the conference, Black women have a place to come together and reflect on challenges they face within their respective careers.
“It’s designed to help address the unique challenges faced by Black students on their journey to become health care leaders by providing knowledge, mentorship and practical insights,” McQuiller said.
McQuiller said BGPC does not receive “much” funding from the Student Government Association’s semesterly allocations, so they rely heavily on catering donations from outside organizations like Milken and businesses like Tonic and Call Your Mother.
The Princeton Review, an online test preparation website, raffled one free MCAT to an attendee, waiving the standard $335 registration fee for the exam.
Hope Rwaga, a co-president of BGPC, said she hopes the conference will increase confidence among pre-health students of color in pursuing their career aspirations by hearing from practicing physicians and advocates and how they succeeded in the field.
“A lot of people feel self-doubt or have imposter syndrome, so as long as they’re able to see people like them at the conference and feel that confidence to pursue this field, especially since this field does not have a lot of Black physicians in it, that’s the main goal is to really push out inspiration and inclusivity,” Rwaga said.
Rwaga said the organization came up with the idea for the conference about three years ago when the group’s co-founders — 2024 graduates Bailey Moore and Tiffany-Chrissy Mbeng — wanted to establish a space to academically support Black female pre-health students. She said BGPC wanted to platform a young medical professional as their keynote speaker so they could answer questions about their pre-health journey having been in school fairly recently.
Deborah Fadoju, the former regional coordinator of the Ohio Department of Health and a current resident at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, delivered the keynote address Friday. Fadoju, a 2020 Howard University alum, said she originally planned on entering a residency to become an obstetrician-gynecologist but switched into public health because of her passion for amplifying medical advocacy for people of color.
“We wanted someone who could speak about how it’s okay to have some bumps in your journey since a lot of people face bumps in undergrad and think it’s the end of their pre-health experience,” Rwaga said.
Fadoju’s presentation was titled “Built from the Breaking: My Journey through Medicine as a Black Woman.” She said she faced discrimination and microaggressions as a Black woman in the health care space, like her supervisors telling her she is “too passionate” or “intimidating.”
“I hope that you leave today feeling really inspired and really encouraged and really practical about walking into spaces and places with people who might not look like you or think like you or be accustomed to the way that you show up in the world, but still feel like it is your right, it is your place, it is your purpose to shift the atmosphere,” Fadoju said in the address.
Fadoju said one of the biggest challenges pre-med students of color will have to face is maintaining confidence in themselves as they navigate the medical field, which she said will challenge their capabilities.
“As you journey through medicine, remember that your biggest fear or your biggest failure actually isn’t achieving the goal that you’ve set for yourself, it really is losing your confidence,” Fadoju said in the address. “You have to kind of prioritize the version of yourself that you know that you are.”
Melissa Davies-Cole, a graduate student studying public health in epidemiology, led “how-to” sessions providing advice on strengthening job applications, maximizing study efforts and conducting research as an undergraduate student, along with Sabrina Altema, a clinical assistant professor in the physical therapy department at Howard University, and Kaitlyn Bell, an outreach specialist from The Princeton Review.
Other breakout sessions included a suture clinic led by the U.S. Army and a dental-carving clinic. Each of the three sessions was taught by a different health professional giving hands-on instructions on researching, studying and clinics focused on blood pressure, dental carving and sutures.
The conference featured a panel with graduate students from different universities, including GW, Howard, Marymount and Johns Hopkins universities, as well as the universities of the District of Columbia and Maryland, all of whom were Black women in health fields like physical therapy and pharmacology.
The panelists all discussed the challenges they had to overcome, the journeys to their respective fields, the importance of networks and mentors and ways to prevent burnout. Arlene Asante, a Maryland-based dentist and one of the panelists, said during the panel that the path to becoming a medical professional includes adversity that everyone has to navigate.
“It has to deal with a lot of knowing who you are and doing a lot of self-evaluation and self-encouragement to get through these troubles,” Asante said.
Panelist Maranda Ward, an assistant professor and director of equity in the department of clinical research and leadership at the School of Medicine & Health Sciences, spoke about the modern discrimination Black patients face that sets them up for unfair treatment. She said they are often labeled as “difficult” or “noncompliant” by doctors and nurses who are not Black, giving doctors a negative perception of patients before they even start treatment.
“That’s already going to color their experience when they interact with you, and now they’re going to be less inclined to actually tell you about this treatment option or a clinical trial or again, that’s how that bias shows up,” Ward said.
Isabelle Kirabo, a junior studying community health at George Mason University said she found it helpful to hear how other people have incorporated community health into their careers.
“As a Black woman, I have kind of had a hard time finding other people that look like me, especially with networking and finding mentors,” Kirabo said. “And so I thought this would be a really good opportunity for that.”
