Lessons in professionalism: Ending the action gap. The Black doctors research committee and a White female martyr for civil rights - Part 2.

The US continues to lag in health outcomes and equity. In Part 1 of this review, we identified a persistent "Action Gap" as a failure of physician professionalism as defined in the Physician Charter on Medical Professionalism. Competency-Based Medical Education identifies professionalism as an opportunity to reconnect ethical foundations to medical training. Role models like internist Jean Cowsert, MD (1925-1967) and a 7-member Black "Medical Intelligence Group", illustrate how professionalism can transcend rhetoric and become action. Cowsert helped lead hospital desegregation during the implementation of Medicare following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. She provided information to federal officials investigating hospital noncompliance with federal desegregation mandates. Days after her identity was compromised, she was shot dead. The circumstances were recently reviewed by the Department of Justice under the Emmett Till Crime Act. Cowsert's story, the work of Mobile civil rights leader John LeFlore and his "Medical Intelligence Group", demonstrate how physicians and healthcare advocates bridged the gap between ethics and action during one of the most turbulent periods in American medical history. Their example is relevant to modern debates regarding professionalism.