Project 3000 by 2000: Expanding Our Network 

By Herbert Nickens, MD, MA, and Timothy Ready, PhD


Closing the Gap, Putting the Right People in the Right Places • May/June 1999


J

ust 35 years ago, U.S. medical schools were as racially segregated 

as most other institutions in American society. Ninety-seven percent of medical students were non-Hispanic Whites. As recently 

as 1964, only 2.2 percent of the 32,000 students enrolled in the 

nation’s existing 83 allopathic medical schools were Black. The two 

Black medical schools, Howard and Meharry, enrolled three-quarters 

of these students. 

This meant that on average, each of the other 81 schools enrolled 

only one Black student every other year. In 1971, the first year for 

which there are data on minority groups other than Blacks, only 19 

Mexican American, 14 mainland Puerto Rican, and 2 American Indian physicians graduated from U.S. medical schools. 

Moving toward diversity 

In the 1960s we agitated for civil rights, and there were urban 

riots. But it was Martin Luther King’s assassination that was the catalytic event that led to greater racial/ethnic diversity in medical schools. 

At the 1968 annual meeting of the Association of American Medical 

College (AAMC), medical students, faculty members, and administrators successfully pressed for the creation of a task force to set goals 

for minority enrollment and recommend strategies to achieve those 

goals. 

Private foundations and the federal government provided broad 

support for programs directed at increasing the number of minorities 

in medicine. Enrollment of minority medical students increased from 

approximately 3 percent of new entrants in 1968 to almost 10 percent in 1974. 

As minority enrollment rose in the early 1970s, a backlash occurred not unlike the one we are experiencing now.There were charges 

of reverse discrimination and lawsuits that had a chilling effect, such 

as the De Funis and Bakke cases. Though it is difficult to prove cause 

and effect in these matters, we do not believe that it was a coincidence 

that minority enrollment in medical schools leveled off in the mid1970s at about nine percent. There it remained until we began organizing Project 3000 by 2000. 

The name Project 3000 by 2000 derives from our goal: to enroll 

3,000 underrepresented minorities annually in U.S. allopathic medical schools by the year 2000. Underrepresented minorities by AAMC’s 

definition are Blacks, Mexican Americans, mainland Puerto Ricans, 

and American Indians and Alaska Natives. 

Achieving our enrollment goal would mean that we had reached 

approximate population parity for underrepresented minorities, those 

racial/ethnic groups that had historically been denied economic and 

educational opportunities. This goal is not new, but it has been embraced by the AAMC since 1970. Our intention was to energize 

people around this initiative and emphasize the need for accountability. 

Getting to the root of the problem 

We set about analyzing past strategies to determine why they had 

not been more successful. Our conclusion: The programs put in place 

in the late 1960s and 1970s, while helpful and necessary, were insufficient to address the primary problem. That problem is the failure of 

our nation’s K-12 schools and our colleges to produce a sufficient 

number of academically well-prepared minority students. 

Data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) starkly demonstrate this problem. NAEP measures the academic skills of our young people at several ages and in various subject areas. The data aren’t pretty. 

There are substantial racial/ethnic gaps in average scores. Even 

more alarming are the disparities in the percentage of Black, Hispanic, 

and White students who demonstrate advanced academic skills. This 

is especially troubling because these are our future physicians, dentists, and other health professionals. 

One can estimate the number of students from various racial/ 

ethnic groups with high-level academic skills by examining the percentage of 17-year-olds who score 350 or higher on the NAEP science 

exam—13 percent of Whites, 1 percent of Blacks and 2 percent of 

Hispanics. Data are not available for American Indians. 

By multiplying these percentages by the number of 17-year-olds 

in each of those groups, we estimate that there are about 334,000 

White 17-year-olds with advanced skills in the sciences, compared to 

only about 3,500 Blacks and 4,500 Hispanics. And it gets worse. 

Because students who do well in science also tend to do well in 

other subjects, these numbers not only give us some fix on the small 

pool of high school students who are ready to pursue science-based 

careers, it also reflects the small number of students who have the level 

of academic skills needed to succeed in law and business schools or 

earn doctoral degrees in liberal arts and social sciences. 

As we grappled with troubling statistics such as these, we concluded that any socially responsible and effective new program intended to increase minority enrollment in medical schools must address these fundamental academic shortfalls. 

Launching Project 3000 by 2000 

The underlying premise of Project 3000 by 2000 is that we 

must increase the number of students who are both interested in 

medicine and academically prepared for medical school. We also believe that massive new resources are not necessarily required to address 

this problem. What is required are leadership, vision, and a willingness 

for educational institutions and community organizations to collaborate. 

continued>>>> 

Office of Minority Health Resource Center 1 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 
Project 3000 by 2000: Expanding Our Network 

By Herbert Nickens, MD, MA, and Timothy Ready, PhD


Closing the Gap, Putting the Right People in the Right Places • May/June 1999


We must ensure that many more minority students are exposed 

to school, home, and neighborhood environments in which high 

academic achievement and high career aspirations are valued and expected. We must nurture interest in health careers and monitor the 

academic performance of both students and educators. 

We launched Project 3000 by 2000 in 1991 with a series of 

workshops for medical school deans. Starting with the deans was 

essential because the Project’s success depended on setting institutional priorities, and on the ability of medical schools to secure similar 

commitments from leaders at partner institutions. 

Despite the fact that the medical schools had no external funding to implement the project, all of our deans signed on. Within a few 

months, virtually every medical school had appointed a Project 3000 

by 2000 coordinator. During the early years of the Project, the number of underrepresented minority matriculants increased from approximately 1,500 to more than 2,000, in part aided by an overall 

increase in the applicant pool. Although these early gains were not 

directly attributable to the new initiatives launched under the auspices of Project 3000 by 2000, they almost certainly are attributable, 

at least in part, to the high visibility given to the cause of diversity in 

medicine. 

As the number of Project 3000 by 2000 initiatives targeting 

middle and high school students grew, it soon became apparent that 

these youngsters needed to be exposed to a wider array of health 

professions. We also realized that all of the health professions essentially draw from the same pool of high achieving students. 

As a result, we began to collaborate with national organizations 

representing dentistry, nursing, osteopathic medicine, and others, and 

urged them to “buy in” to the Project 3000 by 2000 “pipeline” 

model. In 1994, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provided 

funding to support a “multi-health professions” grants program called 

the Project 3000 by 2000 Health Professions Partnership Initiative 

(HPPI). 

And in 1996, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation joined in supporting the HPPI. When grants from the third funding cycle of the HPPI 

are awarded in February of 2000, we expect that there will be 26 

funded HPPI partnerships across the country. 

Up against the backlash 

We are often asked, “Will you reach 3,000 by the year 2000?” 

The short answer is “No.” We will not reach our matriculant goal of 

3,000. As happened 20 years before, we are now witnessing a backlash against initiatives designed to enhance racial and ethnic diversity 

in higher education and in the professions. Court cases with new 

names like Hopwood and Aadarand, and in a new wrinkle, Proposition 209 and Initiative 200, stir up resentment with accusations of 

reverse discrimination. 

Yet America’s fundamental challenge of persistent racial disadvantage and inequality, so eloquently described 55 years ago by sociologist Gunnar Myrdal in the classic, An American Dilemma, persists 

as we enter the new millennium. Although much has changed in 

America, we are nowhere near eliminating the gaping racial disparities 

in health and education that have plagued our nation. 

It is these disparities that Project 3000 by 2000 programs will 

continue to address. Besides contributing to the substantial gains in 

underrepresented minority enrollment in medical schools that occurred during the 1990s, Project 3000 by 2000 has created a foundation for long-term progress by: 

1.	 Contributing to the growth of the “pipeline model.” We have 

promoted this model as a way to address the academic needs of 

students as they progress from pre-college years into baccalaureate and postgraduate health profession schools. 

2.	 Producing a significant body of published work. We have been 

able to document and analyze some of the tough issues related to 

the problems of minority academic achievement. 

3.	 Creating sustainable partnerships. We have forged partnerships 

that we believe are sustainable among K-12 school systems, colleges, health profession schools, and community-based organizations, entities that have not collaborated in the past, but in the 

interest of our children, must collaborate in the future. 

Dr. Nickens is the late Vice President and Dr. Ready is Assistant Vice 

President of the Division of Community and Minority Programs, Association of American Medical Colleges.

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Office of Minority Health Resource Center	 2 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services