Black doctors at UPenn mentor high school students through Physician Track Program

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- A program at the University of Pennsylvania is pairing Black male high school students with mentors who show them pathways into the medical field.

The Physician Track Program at Perelman School of Medicine is hoping to promote diversity among doctors.

"Probably 75% of it is more leadership," said Dr. Lamin Sonko, a first-year emergency medicine student at Penn, who is also one of the mentors.

"It's really important to show people like me these opportunities that are out there so they can be something different, or just be who they want to be instead of following trends," said Seydou Toure, who graduated high school last year and was part of the Physician Track Program.

Toure is among 22 students who have gone through the program since it was founded in 2018.

"There's actually fewer African-American males that are physicians today in the 2000s than there were in the 1970s, which is a really shocking stat," said Dr. Sanford Roberts, a surgeon at Penn who co-founded the mentorship program.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, only 5% of practicing physicians are Black. Programs like this hope to change that by showing young people a path.

"Part of it is trying to be just the best role model possible. Doing what I would want, you know, someone who's ahead of me to be doing," said Sonko.

In the two-year program, the kids do summer wilderness medicine training, get ongoing peer mentoring, and help during the academic year.

"Instead of just focusing on high school, it made me think ahead a little bit," said Tri'Von Brown, a rising high school senior who's part of the program. "They help you with grades and they help you with other things as far as advancement."

The mentorship doesn't end when the kids graduate. They get a handwritten letter from one of the deans at Penn. For some of them, that's led to college acceptances and even jobs.

After graduating, Toure landed a job as a clinical service representative at Penn Urgent Care. He plans on studying to become a nurse.

"Since I grew up in the city, I know how some patients act and how to talk to them and just letting them know they know we're from the same place," he said.