JAMAICA | Ambassador Audrey Marks urges partnership between US and Jamaican medical fraternity

MONTEGO BAY, June 6, 2024  - Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United States has called on members of the National Medical Association, (NMA) to redouble their efforts to dismantle barriers to healthcare access and continue to champion policies that promote equity and inclusion. 

Ambassador Marks made her comments as she addressed The NMA, the largest and oldest national organization representing African American physicians and their patients in the United States.

She invited the NMA members who gathered at the Half Moon Hotel in Montego Bay from May 23-27, “to consider greater partnership with the medical fraternity here in Jamaica.”

She said “By embracing diverse perspectives and experiences, you will be better equipped to address the multifaceted needs of patients and communities both in the US and in Jamaica.”

The Jamaica envoy to the United States spoke to the NMA’s “most timely focus on brain and mental health, the importance of these issues cannot be overstated,” she declared.

She observed that “addressing the gaps in a holistic approach to mental health requires concerted efforts to improve access to affordable, culturally competent care and to integrate mental health services into primary care settings.”

In thanking the NMA for playing its part, Ambassador Marks quoted Dr. Martin  Luther King that “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane."   

She called on the organization  to “continue to heed his call to action and work together to build a healthcare system regionally and globally, that leaves no one behind.”

The National Medical Association has an established US network of affiliated community-based organizations with a powerful reach within African American communities across the nation.

NMA has 33 state and 98 local affiliated medical societies with a ratio of approximately one (1) NMA society for every 259,000 African Americans across the nation. All of the states with large minority populations, especially African Americans, are represented within this NMA network of societies.

-30-