FAQ

Here is a selection of our top frequently asked questions.

What is White Coats for Black Lives?
WhiteCoats4BlackLives is a national medical trainee organization with aims to dismantle racism and accompanying systems of oppression in medicine and fight for the health of Black people and other people of color.

Our school doesn’t have enough students to start a separate chapter how can we organize through existing student groups?
First, if you have not done so, read about how to start a chapter here. If you do not have enough students to start an independent organization, the organization may be kept informal or nested within other identity groups on campus. In the absence of a chapter at your school, actions taken on behalf of WC4BL should be in line with the vision and mission statements on the website and should further one of the three goals of the organization.

WC4BL is a fluid organization. Members at most branches are also members of a second identity group and meet at WC4BL conferences as well as LMSA and SNMA conferences even though WC4BL is not under the moniker of either.

How is WC4BL different from SNMA, LMSA, or any other identity group?
The mission of SNMA and other identity groups is largely to support current underrepresented minority medical students, increase the number of culturally competent physicians, and support communities by ensuring that medical education and services are sensitive to needs of populations. WC4BL is devoted to safeguarding the lives of patients through the elimination of systemic racism, conscious and unconscious bias in the delivery of healthcare and through disrupting structural racism that negatively affects the health of communities of color.

While the two align in their pursuit of delivery of culturally competent healthcare, WC4BL additionally advocates physicians, medical students, and the medical profession to fulfill their responsibility to disrupt systemic racism and its effects on the health of communities of color. WC4BL is first and foremost an organization devoted to advocacy for an increased role of physicians in disruption of systemic and interpersonal racism for the sake of patients of color who suffer loss of life and livelihood.