Blacks Have A Lot of Heart Disease But Few Black Heart Doctors

Recent data from the American Heart Association shows around 60% of Black American adults have heart disease, and heart disease death rates are highest among Black Americans compared to other racial and ethnic groups.

 
Indeed, Blacks are dominant when it comes to heart disease, yet its rare for them to be treated by a Black cardiologist. A 2021 report by the Association of American Medical Colleges found that only 4.2% of cardiologists are Black. 

An earlier study, published in 2019 in the journal JAMA Cardiology had similar findings, revealing that Black doctors made up only 3% of the cardiologist workforce. That same report found that 51% of cardiologists were white and 19% were Asian.

 
Moreover, a 2021 study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that the proportion of Black doctors in general in the U.S. had increased by only 4 percentage points over the last 120 years. 

The study also found that the share of Black male doctors remained the same since 1940. While there’s little data on the rates of Black women in cardiology, according to ‘The Lancet’ Black women make up only 2.8% of the physician workforce.