In 1975, the modest beginnings of a medical school at the Atlanta University Center spanned only two trailers, sitting in the middle of the Morehouse College campus as the nascent start of a two-year Medical Associate degree program.
With an initial state appropriation from Governor George Busbee’s administration as well as federal funds, the school was initially guided by famed hematologist, and later U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services, Dr. Louis Sullivan, who became the program’s founding dean.
Its first medical students were admitted in 1978, and then transferred to another medical institution to complete their clinical training years and receive their medical degrees. The program became fully independent in 1981, and Sullivan would become the first president of the Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM).
The newly independent and private Morehouse School of Medicine became fully accredited by 1985 and began awarding degrees.
In 1989, Sullivan was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to head the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. And though the nation has only four HBCU medical schools, this quartet continues to educate and produce the vast majority of our nation’s physicians of color.
Fast forward to 2014, and Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice was installed as president and dean and, more recently, elevated to president and CEO of the institution.
Rice, a renowned infertility specialist and researcher, is taking the nationally acclaimed medical school to higher heights, along with some new and broader mission objectives.
While still true to its core mission of educating and placing more Black primary care physicians in communities of need and increasing health equity and health justice, Rice has expanded the school’s endowment to several hundred-million dollars, worked constantly to reduce the medical school debt burden on matriculating students and identified and built out centers of excellence (particularly in areas critical to communities of color) — while simultaneously recruiting and assembling a dream team of faculty and administrative staff to accomplish these new visions.
Rice wants MSM to partner, in both the public and private sectors, with primary medical health care and pharmaceutical companies, with federal health & research agencies, and with common minded providers, such as the burgeoning More in Common Alliancewith Common Spirit Health, which operates 2,200 hospitals, urgent care facilities and health care sites across 24 states.
The first of these programs is up and running in Chattanooga, providing a wide variety of health care certification training programs.
The medical school recently announced a similar partnership with the Phoebe Putney Health Care System in Albany.
Rice has developed a support/funding partnership with Michael Bloomberg, and Bloomberg Philanthropy’s Greenwood Initiative, which recently provided a commitment of $600 million in endowment and unrestricted funds to the Morehouse School of Medicine, Howard University College of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.
This record gift commitment follows an earlier gift by Bloomberg of $100 million divided among the quartet based upon their then-current enrollments.
As the pandemic moved our nation and every college campus into lockdown in the spring of 2020, Rice was among the first to reopen campus, with a combination of virtual and in-person instruction, and a strict testing and contact-tracing program in place, the school was reopened to continue to produce more physicians to battle the virus where needs were among the greatest.
She rolled up her sleeve and took one of the first available COVID-19 vaccines, live on CNN, along with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and led a series of virtual Town Halls aimed at answering questions and educating minority communities rightfully fearful of prior medical experimentation on persons of color.
Rice brought in a new dean, Dr. Adrian Tyndall from the University of Florida. As a fertility specialist and OBGyn, she noted the continuing challenges of maternal mortality and post-partum outcomes, forming a Maternal Center for Health Equity.
Atlanta, the institution’s home, suffered a significant blow to healthcare access when the Atlanta Medical Center and its affiliate locations suddenly closed their doors during the pandemic in November 2022.
Rice has been on a mission since to plug that gap. As the institution celebrates its Solid Gold 50th Anniversary of Healing during April 2025, I am betting on MSM and Rice to find a hospital partner to address and close that service gap. Here’s to their next 50 years.