AP - The American Medical Association on Thursday issued a formal apology for more than a century of discriminatory policies that excluded blacks from participating in a group long considered the voice of U.S. doctors.

The apology stems from initiatives at the nation’s largest doctors’ group to reduce racial disparities in medicine — from the embarrassingly small number of black physicians to the disproportionate burden of disease among blacks and other minorities.

It comes more than 40 years after AMA delegates denounced policies at state and local medical societies dating to the 1800s that barred blacks. For decades, AMA delegates resisted efforts to get them to speak out forcefully against discrimination or to condemn the smaller medical groups that historically have had a big role in shaping AMA policy.

The apology being issued Thursday might seem belated, but it isn’t the AMA’s first for its discriminatory history. Dr. John Nelson, then AMA’s president, offered a similar apology at a 2005 meeting on improving health care and eliminating disparities, sponsored by the government’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The new apology is a more formal acknowledgment of the AMA’s embarrassing past, and is also part of the AMA’s efforts to improve an image that in recent years has lost its luster. In many circles, the AMA is seen as a stodgy trade group focused on doctors’ rather than patients’ best interests.