Second from left, Dr. Roger Mitchell, who spoke at NAACP’s 119th convention, “Equity in Action” Health Summit, held July 12, 2025 | National Medical Association Instagram
CHARLOTTE, N.C.—”Act with the fierce urgency of now!” for health care access and equity for Black communities, urged Dr. Roger Mitchell, keynote speaker at the NAACP’s 119th convention “Equity in Action” Health Summit held here July 12. Dr. Mitchell is the president of Howard University Hospital and president-elect of the National Medical Association.
“There are physicians in the room. There are nurses, there are administrators, there are activists, there are politicians, there are fundraisers, there are thought leaders in the room. No matter what your talent, no matter what your training, no matter what your treasure, you’re called to act now,” he told the gathering.
Dr. Mitchell responded to the crises of health care access and equity for Black communities under the Trump administration, decrying the recent passing of the “Big Beautiful Bill” and attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
In response to Trump’s assault on Medicaid, he urged the creation of networks of health navigators. “We must mobilize our community to make sure that they don’t lose their benefit,” he said. Anyone with a business could provide volunteer hours to assist individuals in meeting the 80-hour requirements to maintain Medicaid coverage, he suggested. Additionally, he urged providers to see patients without insurance.
Work, advocate, serve, push, pray, love, and fight
Dr. Mitchell credited his understanding of the social determinants of health as emerging from W.E.B. Du Bois’s analysis in The Souls of Black Folk. He reminded the audience of the importance of the overlapping areas of struggle today. “Social determinants make up more than 70% of disease incidence, progression, and outcomes. So, we have to take action to work and advocate and serve and push and pray and love and fight across all of these policy areas,” he explained.
There’s a historical parallel to today’s terrain of struggle, Mitchell declared, recalling Frederick Hoffman’s 1896 call for eugenics as “the first Project 2025.” Speaking as the president-elect of the NMA—the oldest and largest group of Black physicians in the United States–Dr. Mitchell compared recent shuttering of DEI initiatives with the climate in which the NMA was founded, a time when hospitals would not allow Black physicians. The parallel in recent months is the removal of the requirement to recruit and retain diverse medical school admits by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the accrediting body for medical education programs. Simultaneously, the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education, the body responsible for accrediting all graduate medical training programs, has suspended its diversity and inclusion policy for residency programs.
In both times, the NMA has stood strong in the fightback, according to Dr. Mitchell. Sixty years ago, in 1965, the NMA stood alone in support of the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, even when other organizations “folded under pressure.” Today, he continued, “The National Medical Association calls for diversity. Today, they called for equity. Today, we call for more inclusion, more black men and women in medicine, more diversity, and clinical trials, more access to care, not less.”
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