This Black doctor just made history at Johns Hopkins University!

In June 2024, Nancy Abu-Bonsrah achieved a historic feat, becoming the first Black woman to graduate from Johns Hopkins University’s neurosurgery program. She took to social media to announce the news, however, it was a close friend who noted that Dr. Abu-Bonsrah had quite literally also made history, Because Of Them We Can reports.

“Congratulations to my dear friend, and the first Black woman to graduate from the neurosurgery program at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Nancy Abu-Bonsrah!,” wrote the woman called Anna, whose username is @itsafronomics.

According to Dr. Abu-Bonsrah,  becoming a neurosurgery doctor was a 12-year journey. She also noted that it felt “surreal” that she’d completed the program and would head to community practice located at UPMC Williamsport, an acute care hospital in Pennsylvania, starting in the fall. 

Located in Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins was voted the No. 2 Best Medical School: Research, according to U.S. News and World Report.

A 2022 report pulled from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) reveals that only 5.7% of practicing physicians in America are Black, a huge difference from their white counterparts who make up 63.9% of active physicians in the U.S. Asians represent the second-largest group with 20.6% of active physicians.

According to another AAMC report, during the 2020-21 academic year, 7.6% of students attending medical school were Black or African American with the percentage of Black men enrolled in medical school barely seeing an increase over the past five years. In 2014-15, they made up 2.4% of students enrolled in a medical program. That number increased to 2.9% for 2020-21.

On the contrary, Black women comprised 4.5% of students enrolled in the 2020-21 academic year and 8.9% of women in medical school that year, per the National Institutes of Health.