Earlier this month, Pitt Pediatrics’ CHAMP group hosted its now annual Black History Month Trivia Bowl at Arsenal Middle School. As part of the event, students gathered in the auditorium of the school and fielded Jeopardy!-style questions, moderated by Sylvia Owusu-Ansah, MD, MPH, FAAP, and other CHAMP members. 
In speaking with local media, Owusu-Ansah noted, “currently, in medicine, only 5% of active physicians are black, and only 2.8% of those physicians are black females. And we have a crisis currently, where our black male physicians are not entering medical school in the numbers that we’re used to.”
This disparity has an outsized effect on health outcomes and the accessibility of care, especially for underrepresented populations. And many groups in Pittsburgh are especially vulnerable to this issue.
The goal of CHAMP is to address this early in the pipeline for students in Pittsburgh. By encouraging and supporting middle school students on their path to achieving levels of higher education and in supporting URiM (underrepresented in medicine) medical students in the mentorship process as they give back to younger learners through community involvement, CHAMP emphasizes a community-level approach to disparities in healthcare and the medical field.
But aside from those efforts, Nurse Cassandra Brown, of Arsenal and our CHAMP organization, pointed out that the school has a large population of black and brown students, “And it’s been an ongoing issue with [these] students to not really be educated about all the wonderful and innovative African Americans there are in history.” Part of the goal of Black History Trivia Bowl is to educate and inspire students with these sometimes unknown or unrecognized individuals and events from Black History.
Started in 2020 with a collaboration among Owusu-Ansah, Noel Spears, MD, MPH, and Kiki Torres, MD, MS, all of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, CHAMP hosts several events at Arsenal Middle School throughout the year, including “Save a Life Day,” “Doc Talks,” and wellness box donations.
A full list of engagement events, and community members and supporters, can be found on CHAMP’s homepage here.
For more updates on CHAMP activities, events, and community efforts, follow Pitt Pediatrics on Twitter and Instagram.