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On February 12, the Office of Inclusive Excellence at the Larner College of Medicine hosted a Black HEALTHstory Month lecture on racial integration in American medicine presented virtually by Pamela Preston Reynolds, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine in the Division of General, Geriatric, Palliative, and Hospital Medicine and associate chair for professionalism and diversity at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

Titled “The Federal Government’s Efforts to Racially Integrate Hospitals Under Medicare, 1963–1967,” the lecture explored explicit discrimination against minorities that existed in the 1960s in hospital patient admissions and physician and nurse staff appointments, and the changes that followed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as Medicare legislation in 1965.

“They were so deeply committed to serving the American people and to using their energy to accomplish a bigger goal than just what they themselves might be able to do.” 
— Pamela Preston Reynolds, M.D., Ph.D.

Reynolds noted that the process of interviewing historical figures who spearheaded progress in fighting racial discrimination in health care revealed common threads that can inspire and motivate us today: “One of the best research programs I’ve ever done in my entire life is actually interviewing these people,” she said, “because they were so deeply committed to serving the American people and to using their energy to accomplish a bigger goal than just what they themselves might be able to do.”

For more than 30 years, Reynolds’s research, publications, and teaching have focused on the history of race discrimination in health care and medical education, medical professionalism and ethics, the history of racial integration of American medicine, and the history and contributions of African American health professionals.