Colorado’s lawmakers recently gave a final approval to fund UNC’s — University of Northern Colorado’s — proposed college of osteopathic medicine; $127.5 million will be allocated toward construction startup. This is good news for northern Colorado and the whole state since the two existent medical schools have not made much of a dent in Colorado’s critical shortage of physicians. The U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration states that 65% of the state’s physician needs are still unmet.

Perhaps because its GDP share is 18.3%, U.S. health care is claimed to be the best in the world. Sadly, only a sliver of the gargantuan amount goes to care for the poor. Dearth of minority physicians — Black, indigenous Americans and Hispanic — contributed to most of the 1 million Americans dying from the COVID pandemic who were racial minorities. Most lacked good pre-pandemic health care.

The physicians’ oath is to treat and care for the sick. Unfortunately, most American medical schools have not been sensitive to the plight of sick, poor Americans. Like most academics, medical educators view the world through a very narrow prism: select an elite student body, produce an elite work force. Divorced from the health-care needs of society around them, they don’t feel obliged to prepare an adequate health-care workforce even if the state coffers support their existence. Their self-willed blindness leads to a puzzling indifference in which, as the masses clamor for more care, ivory tower denizens watch the sick getting sicker.

That’s at least the only conclusion anyone watching medical educators’ decades long inaction can make. If they cared, medical educators could have devised ways to train more minority physicians. By not doing so, they have failed America.

In his 1910 Report, Abraham Flexner caused the closure of 75% of medical institutions. Among them were five of the seven then-existent Black medical schools. He left Howard and Mehary as the only HBCU medical schools. If all seven of them were still in place, it’s estimated that another 30,000 to 35,000 Black and minority physicians would be practicing today.

Responsibility for too few physicians of color must also lie with minority communities themselves; they, more than anyone else, know that dependence on government’s charity to always do the right thing is foolhardy and shortsighted. Ways for communities to affect their health care include: loud advocacy for change; making some of the needed changes themselves; helping removal of barriers of the community’s children’s education. I believe in personal responsibility; finding what one’s health care needs are leads to better health. Political, religious and civic leadership that’s usually found cheering for their future athletes could also be at the helm of a better education movement: to train future doctors, engineers, scientists and good teachers.

There’s absolutely no magic in attaining good grades at school to qualify for admission to medical school. Universities across this nation send scouts to high schools to meet prospective football and basketball players. I have energetically advocated for professional schools to take a leaf from the athletic coaching cadre’s book, to identify, support, nurture students in K-12 schools through colleges, until they eventually become doctors, engineers, mathematicians.

Far too many bright students are not afforded the light to decipher their capacity for a life of greater endeavor and to equip themselves with lifesaving skills such as one learns in medical training.

Academic institutions, I believe, exist to serve the people. Far too often though, soon after construction and promises are made to the community, the bloom quickly fades. They take on an independent stance, forgetting their duty to the common good. I have talked to sundry DEI personnel suggesting they institute some of the steps I advocate, with little success. It’s obvious, needed remedial learning is best done at an earlier stage than after admission to college.

I have had the good fortune to meet several members of the UNC faculty with whom I discussed some of the points outlined here. One of their stated objectives for starting a medical school is to educate, train and include more students from our marginalized communities, whose people died in droves in the pandemic.

I have great hopes for the new school, which opens its doors in fall of 2025. If the osteopathic faculty can endeavor to work in concert with our community colleges and K-12 schools, chances are it will make an appreciable difference in Colorado’s health care. It’s also just possible our other universities might copy this newcomer’s example.

Pius Kamau, M.D., a retired general surgeon, is president of the Aurora-based Africa America Higher Education Partnerships; co-founder of the Africa Enterprise Group and an activist for minority students’ STEM education. He is a National Public Radio commentator, a Huffington Post blogger, a past columnist for Denver dailies and is featured on the podcast, “Never Again.”