Spring brings mild weather, sunshine and gratitude after winter’s reign and it also brings another special event, Match Day. Match Day is when medical school graduates move into residencies with hospitals in the final laps of a journey to become full-fledged doctors.
Attiyya Maryam, after a stellar high school performance alongside undergraduate and medical school at two respected East Coast universities, is headed to a major Southern hospital.
She wants to become an obstetrician and gynecologist—and is looking to save the lives of Black women so they don’t die in childbirth. As The Final Call reported recently, “Black women already have a higher maternal mortality rate than women of other races.
They die from pregnancy-related complications almost five times more than Asian women, three times more than White women and about four times more than Hispanic women of any race.”
“I came in thinking I wanted to be a doctor, but I didn’t really have any passion behind it at that point,” Sister Attiyya explained in a separate interview. “I used my four years in college to really discover what the field would mean for me.
And so was really towards the end of my undergraduate career where I said, ‘okay, I really want to be a doctor because I know this is what I’m destined to do.’ This is God’s plan for my life.”
The 2025 Main Residency Match was the largest ever in the program’s 73-year history, with 43,237 total positions offered—up 4.2 percent over 2024, noted the American Medical Association.
There were 1,734 more certified positions offered this year compared with last year, 231 more certified programs and 877 more positions in primary care. The total number of applicants were up too: 52,498 applicants registered for the match, 2,085 more than last year—a 4.1 percent increase, the association reported.
But all the news for Black medical students is not good news. Dr. David Skorton, president and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges, wrote earlier this year about how enrollment of Black medical students has fallen.
“The percentage of Black first-year medical students fell 11.6 percent in the 2024-25 school year. The AAMC notes it’s the third consecutive year that there’s been a drop in Black matriculants, but the one-year decline is still significant,” he wrote.
He and others blame a Supreme Court decision that said race could not be considered in admissions.
Studies suggest that Black patients experience better health outcomes, including increased life expectancy and reduced mortality rates, when they have access to Black doctors. This is likely due to factors like increased trust, improved communication, and more culturally competent care, say experts.
A higher level of trust and communication can lead to increased adherence to treatment plans, and a greater willingness to engage in preventative care. Black doctors may also have a deeper understanding of the cultural and social factors that can impact the health of Black patients, allowing them to provide more tailored and effective care.
Black physicians are more likely to practice in underserved communities, which can improve access to healthcare for Black patients. Studies have shown that a greater representation of Black doctors in a community is associated with reduced health disparities between Black and White individuals. Research also indicates that life expectancy is longer among Black individuals in areas with higher ratios of Black primary care physicians.
Despite the high court ruling and other opposition, it’s up to us to encourage and support our children as we encourage them to pursue medicine, engineering and the hard sciences. That means we have to sacrifice time, money, energy, cooperate and make high academic achievement a highly valued virtue among us.
It’s not unusual to encounter Nigerian American, Palestinian American, Arab American, and Indian American physicians in disproportionate numbers when we seek medical care. These cultures push for children to become physicians and have role models and resources in their communities.
As the Nation of Islam moves closer to 100 years of existence in the West, a respect for and aspiring to the hard sciences—as the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad instructed us—is pervasive. That focus is being baked into our culture and many of our children are pursuing medical training and medical careers.
We celebrate them and uplift them as others praise great athletes. We see them as our stars and critical components in the salvation of our suffering community.
A major factor in Attiyya’s decision to become a doctor was “learning really about the depth of the maternal mortality crisis in our country and how it affects Black women. And I thought that there are ways that I could make an impact.”
“One of those was becoming a physician and also getting my master’s in public health as well to really be able to understand how we can prevent this disparity from continuing to grow in today’s day and age,” she said.
“The master’s in public health, in particular, really equips you,” she continued. “Becoming a doctor is a whole separate thing, but you still need knowledge of what’s going on in the community, understanding the numbers and the people that it’s impacting,” she explained.
While medical school and education can be expensive with an expected financial windfall in the end, it’s obvious money doesn’t motivate Attiyyah.
She wants to work in community care or other spaces that allow her to impact her community, Black people.
“I’m so grateful to Allah for this blessing and the fact that it happened during Ramadan. But I’m so proud of Atiyyah,” said Shahid M. Allah of his daughter. He is a longtime member of the Nation of Islam, lecturer and author. Match Day occurred on March 21.
“Born on October 7, 1998, on the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s birthday, she was always focused, always pleasant, always strong of mind and soft-spoken and kind,” he said.
“All I could do was thank Allah for the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan for training us up. I thank (Allah) over and over again for the ability to be able to produce life and bring life on the planet.”
Attiyya has some wisdom to share with those who may want to become doctors or enter healthcare.
“Black people, we don’t always come from the strongest high schools and things like that,” Attiyya observed. “So going into college, if you know that you want to pursue a difficult field like computer science, becoming an attorney, becoming a physician, nursing, very difficult fields, you need to invest in that early.
“I would say rely heavily on tutors or mentors in your community that may have already done it that can equip you with the knowledge. So, for example, I didn’t know many medical students before I went to medical school, but I relied heavily on my pre-health office and they gave me the guidance so I didn’t have to do it all by myself.
“They told me when I needed things that I needed to change to make me a great candidate for medical school. For example, they told me I needed to take a year off after I graduated college just to gain more clinical experience and things like that. And they said they felt that would make me a competitive applicant.
“They were absolutely right because I got accepted to eight medical schools, which is a lot of medical schools to get accepted to,” she said.
“So be willing to take criticism, rely heavily on your mentors, invest in what you want to pursue early on, and go full force after it,” Attiyya advised. “Don’t be lazy in what you want to pursue. You have to really put your all into it, if you want to get good outcomes.”
—Naba’a Muhammad, editor-in-chief, The Final Call
