Not a choice, an obligation.

The author traces the gradual increase of educational opportunities for underrepresented minorities that began in the mid-1950s and indicates the role played by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and individual medical schools in the 1960s and 1970s to increase minority enrollment in medical schools. Minority enrollment did grow dramatically for awhile, but since 1974 the nationwide percentage of minority students enrolling has remained about the same despite the rising percentage of minorities in the population (although some individual schools have recruited and graduated relatively large numbers of minority students). The author then emphasizes how crucial to the nation's future it is to reverse this trend and achieve equity of opportunity for minorities by enhancing their educational opportunities. He maintains that academic medical centers must become involved in identifying and assisting capable minority students well before they are potential applicants to medical school, thereby helping to enlarge the pool of academically qualified minority applicants rather than relying on more aggressive recruitment from the existing small applicant pool. Enlarging the minority applicant pool is the cornerstone of a new AAMC campaign nearly to double the number of underrepresented minority matriculants by the beginning of the next decade: Project 3000 by 2000. The short-term and long-term strategies of this campaign are described; it focuses on creating partnerships with high schools and undergraduate colleges and will be based in part on a variety of existing and successful efforts of this type being made by individual medical schools, private foundations, and the federal government.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)