Since 1964, the Student National Medical Association (SNMA) has been the guardian of the recruitment, retention, and graduation of minority medical students. Learning to Care, Learning to Lead: The History of the Student National Medical Association is the story of how SNMA came to prominence and continues to be the organization most directly responsible for enhancing the numbers of culturally sensitive and clinically excellent physicians in the United States.

Learning to Care, Learning to Lead reviews the sixty-year history of SNMA by telling the individual stories of several of its prime-mover leaders, by reviewing the key aspects of programmatic and philosophical development, and by placing its mission and growth in the context of changes occurring nationally.