Ethic, gender diversity increasing in medical schools

Photo: ER Productions Limited/Getty Images The number of Black, Hispanic and female applicants and enrollees continued to increase at U.S. medical schools in the 2022-23 academic year, according to new data from the Association of American Medical Colleges. This year, the number of medical school applicants returned to pre-pandemic levels, after the 2021-2022 academic year data revealed a record-setting and atypical 18% increase of medical school applicants during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to this unprecedented increase during the onset of the public health crisis, the AAMC compared data from the 2022-23 academic year with the 2020-21 academic year for its annual data release. Using this comparison,…

Two state employees and a public school media clerk are suing the state of Georgia in southeast United States, saying state health insurance illegally discriminates by refusing to pay for gender-transition healthcare. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Atlanta on Wednesday by Micha Rich, Benjamin Johnson and an anonymous state employee suing on behalf of her adult child. They argue Georgia’s State Health Benefit Plan (SHBP), which insures more than 660,000 state government and public school employees and retirees, is breaking federal law. “The exclusion not only harms the health and finances of transgender people seeking gender dysphoria treatment, it also reinforces the stigma attached to being transgender,…