Better Health for All

Richard D. deShazo, M.D., MACP, a 1971 graduate of the School of Medicine, has long been committed to reducing healthcare disparities. In fact, in 2018 he edited a popular book on the subject, The Racial Divide in American Medicine: Black Physicians and the Struggle for Justice in Healthcare.

Dr. deShazo, who goes by “Rick,” also serves as co-chair of a new scholarship committee focused on supporting qualified medical students from groups considered underrepresented in medicine (URiM). According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, URiM groups include “those racial and ethnic populations that are underrepresented in the medical profession relative to their numbers in the general population.”

Recently, Dr. deShazo and his wife Gloria went a step further by making a gift to establish a scholarship for URiM students at UAB. The goal, Dr. deShazo says, is to increase the number of URiM students who attend UAB for medical training, with the hope that many of them will remain in Alabama when they start their practice.

“UAB has been losing talented URiM students from Alabama to Ivy League medical schools because those schools offer more full scholarships. Most of those students never come back to Alabama,” Dr. deShazo says. “We need to keep more of our medical students in Alabama to help address health disparities, particularly in rural areas.”

A Birmingham native, Dr. deShazo recently returned to the city and UAB as an adjunct professor of medicine after serving on faculty at the Uniformed Services University and Tulane Medical Schools, ten years as chair of medicine at the University of South Alabama, and more than 20 years on the faculty of the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson as chair of the Department of Medicine. He says he was excited to team up with “his younger medical school colleague, Pink Folmar, M.D.,” a 1972 graduate of the School of Medicine, as co-chair of the URiM Scholarship Committee—a sentiment Dr. Folmar shares.

“[Dr. deShazo] knows how to approach business,” says Dr. Folmar. “He’s worked with several entities in Mississippi that have realized the scholarship support we seek can make life better for everyone in a state like ours.”

The URiM Scholarship Committee is part of an URiM task force the Medical Alumni Association formed in partnership with the School of Medicine. The task force’s goal is to develop a culturally competent, inclusive, and diverse healthcare workforce to help eliminate health disparities in Alabama. This multipronged effort includes improving recruitment for outstanding URiM medical students, strengthening mentorship for those students, and increasing scholarships to recruit the most talented URiM students.

This is an important time for such an effort, Dr. deShazo says, because of the current transition to more of a team approach in healthcare. “Doctors are working with nurse practitioners and physician assistants and other health professionals in teams, which is going to provide a pathway to address rural health problems,” Dr. deShazo says. “But right now we don’t have enough doctors to lead those teams because our state has among the least desirable numbers of doctors per patient. So we have an opportunity to improve health in our state that we’re going to miss if we don’t put more doctors into rural areas.”

The deShazos’ scholarship gift includes an estate gift. Dr. deShazo says he wanted to structure the gift that way because increasing the number of URiM students at UAB will not happen overnight. “We’re currently donating our RMD (required minimum distribution) residuals, and then we’re adding a gift at the time of death to make sure that the scholarship is completed,” he says. “That is the easiest way for people who don’t have a huge pile of money sitting around somewhere to do these types of gifts.”

Dr. deShazo and Dr. Folmar are available to share their donor experience with former classmates or anyone interested in supporting URiM medical students. Dr. deShazo can be reached at rddeshaz@uab.edu and Dr. Folmar at pink.folmar@gmail.com.

If you would like to give to UAB, please contact the Office of Planned Giving at (205) 996-7533 or plannedgiving@uab.edu to get started.