Monthly Newsletter

Last Monday, Sophie Balzora’s group texts with fellow women doctors started blowing up with “a lot of angry, red-faced emojis,” she said.

The messages followed the release that same day of a study in the journal Health Affairs that found that women doctors in the United States earn an estimated $2 million less than men over the course of their careers — and that the pay gap begins the first year they practice.

Fueled by the massive health disparities exposed by the coronavirus pandemic and the racial reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd, health equity research is now in vogue. Journals are clamoring for it, the media is covering it, and the National Institutes of Health, after publicly apologizing for giving the field short shrift, recently announced it would unleash nearly $100 million for research on the topic.

This would seem to be great news. But a STAT investigation shows a disturbing trend: a gold rush mentality where researchers with little or no background or training in health equity research, often white and already well-funded, are rushing in to scoop up grants and publish papers.

"I've been on medical missionary trips with her, so seeing her in medicine — she's this amazing woman,” she said. “I just love how she serves others, and I want to serve people in a similar way."

Lima, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, began classes at the Tufts Medical School in the fall. She is part of a small group of Black students pursuing careers as physicians, though that number is increasing as schools adopt new procedures to attract and reduce barriers for students of color.

Among Tufts' 195-member class of 2025, Lima is one of 26 students who identify as Black or African American — a major jump from nine the year before. And across the country, the number of first-year Black students is up 21%, an unprecedented spike since 2020.

ueled by the massive health disparities exposed by the coronavirus pandemic and the racial reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd, health equity research is now in vogue. Journals are clamoring for it, the media is covering it, and the National Institutes of Health, after publicly apologizing for giving the field short shrift, recently announced it would unleash nearly $100 million for research on the topic.

This would seem to be great news. But a STAT investigation shows a disturbing trend: a gold rush mentality where researchers with little or no background or training in health equity research, often white and already well-funded, are rushing in to scoop up grants and publish papers.