Russell Ledet, MD, PhD, MBA is a triple board resident at Indiana University School of Medicine where he focuses on pediatrics as well as adult, child and adolescent psychiatry. As the founder of The 15 White Coats, he endeavors to bring diversity to medicine and improve the mental health of young people.
Ledet opened up about the organization’s plan of action.
What inspired you to found The 15 White Coats?
It wasn’t intentional. In the summer of 2019, my daughter and I went to visit the Whitney Plantation and as we were leaving my daughter commented, I’ll never forget. She was like, “We’ve come a very long way.” I was like, “First of all, who is we? Two, what are you talking about?” She’s like, “People weren’t even allowed to read and they were eating the worst of things. So we’ve come a very long way.” I was like, “You are very right.” And I came back and talked to some of my very close friends and colleagues who are now on the board of The 15 White Coats. I was like,”Can we go back there and take a photo, to show the world how far we’ve come?” Sure enough, we went into those photos. I remember sending this email and telling them, “Listen, this is going to be an iconic photo. This photo is just going to shock the world and change the way that we think about who can become what.” Surely enough, it happened. Kelly Clarkson and Brooke Baldwin over at CNN called, Steve Harvey called us, then Lester Holt called us, “Good Morning America” called us, and Dr. Oz. Everybody called us. That was a moment in which we just realized we have an opportunity to change the way medicine looks.
How is the organization increasing diversity in medicine?
It hasn’t been formally announced yet, but we just got a half-million-dollar grant from Genentech, a huge pharmaceutical company that truly believes in diversifying STEM and medicine, to prepare 50 minorities exclusively from HBCUs, Hispanic serving institutions, and indigenous-serving institutions to go into medical school in partnership with medical schools. We’re doing everything from paying for their test to get into medical school, buying them a suit, and a ring light, getting mentorship, and everything that they need to pay for their applications. The entire economic burden, and all of the support that they need to get there is already there. Then the other part of that is we’re doing what’s called a tether HBCU Tour, where we are going to visit 15 different HBCUs. We’re also going to visit an elementary school, a middle school, and a high school in that same city and drop off library books by Black and Brown authors in each of those schools. We donate at different levels because obviously, we recognize that if the babies can’t see someone who looks like them, and they can’t read; it’s going to be hard for them to dream to become doctors, but we also need to support the people who are almost there. So, we’re doing it on multiple levels and I’m proud of the work that we’re doing at The 15 White Coats.
