Geospatial Analysis of the Proportion of Persons Defined As Underrepresented in Medicine for Each Medical School and Their Surrounding Core-Based Statistical Area

Overview

Journal Health Equity

Specialty Health Services

Date 2024 Mar 4

PMID 38435025

Authors

Zoel A Quinonez

Angel Benitez-Melo

Laura M Diaz

Michael Lennig

Danton Char

Charlotte Smith

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: The current approach to increasing diversity in medical education fails to consider local community demographics when determining medical school matriculation.

Purpose: We propose that medical schools better reflect their surrounding community, both because racially/ethnically concordant physicians have been shown to provide better care and to repair the historical and current racist impacts of these institutions that have criminalized, displaced, and excluded local Black and Brown communities.

Methods And Results: In this study, we used geospatial analysis to determine that medical school enrollments generally fail to reflect their surrounding community, represented as their core-based statistical area, within which the individual medical schools reside.

References

Ibrahim S . Diversity in Medical Faculty and Students. JAMA Netw Open. 2020; 3(9):e2015326. DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.15326. View

Allen A, Abram C, Pothamsetty N, Jacobo A, Lewis L, Maddali S . Leading Change at Berkeley Public Health: Building the Anti-racist Community for Justice and Social Transformative Change. Prev Chronic Dis. 2023; 20:E48. PMC: 10275329. DOI: 10.5888/pcd20.220370. View

Morris D, Gruppuso P, McGee H, Murillo A, Grover A, Adashi E . Diversity of the National Medical Student Body - Four Decades of Inequities. N Engl J Med. 2021; 384(17):1661-1668. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsr2028487. View

Rice V . Diversity in Medical Schools: A Much-Needed New Beginning. JAMA. 2021; 325(1):23-24. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2020.21576. View

Takeshita J, Wang S, Loren A, Mitra N, Shults J, Shin D . Association of Racial/Ethnic and Gender Concordance Between Patients and Physicians With Patient Experience Ratings. JAMA Netw Open. 2020; 3(11):e2024583. PMC: 7653497. DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.24583. View

Karbeah J, Hardeman R, Almanza J, Kozhimannil K . Identifying the Key Elements of Racially Concordant Care in a Freestanding Birth Center. J Midwifery Womens Health. 2019; 64(5):592-597. DOI: 10.1111/jmwh.13018. View

Rolle M, Garba D, Sconyers O, Haynes C . Letter to the Editor: HBCUs and Global Surgery: How Intentional Recruitment of Black Students Advances the Field. World J Surg. 2021; 46(1):292-293. DOI: 10.1007/s00268-021-06240-y. View

Goldacre M, Davidson J, Maisonneuve J, Lambert T . Geographical movement of doctors from education to training and eventual career post: UK cohort studies. J R Soc Med. 2013; 106(3):96-104. PMC: 3595409. DOI: 10.1177/0141076812472617. View

Stanford F . The Importance of Diversity and Inclusion in the Healthcare Workforce. J Natl Med Assoc. 2020; 112(3):247-249. PMC: 7387183. DOI: 10.1016/j.jnma.2020.03.014. View

10.

Daher Y, Austin E, Munter B, Murphy L, Gray K . The history of medical education: a commentary on race. J Osteopath Med. 2021; 121(2):163-170. DOI: 10.1515/jom-2020-0212. View

11.

Terregino C, Saguil A, Price-Johnson T, Anachebe N, Goodell K . The Diversity and Success of Medical School Applicants With Scores in the Middle Third of the MCAT Score Scale. Acad Med. 2019; 95(3):344-350. DOI: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000002941. View

12.

Flexner A . Medical education in the United States and Canada. From the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Bulletin Number Four, 1910. Bull World Health Organ. 2002; 80(7):594-602. PMC: 2567554. View

13.

Malawa Z, Gaarde J, Spellen S . Racism as a Root Cause Approach: A New Framework. Pediatrics. 2021; 147(1). DOI: 10.1542/peds.2020-015602. View

14.

Poma P . Race/Ethnicity Concordance Between Patients and Physicians. J Natl Med Assoc. 2017; 109(1):6-8. DOI: 10.1016/j.jnma.2016.12.002. View

15.

Ross P, Lypson M, Byington C, Sanchez J, Wong B, Kumagai A . Learning From the Past and Working in the Present to Create an Antiracist Future for Academic Medicine. Acad Med. 2020; 95(12):1781-1786. DOI: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000003756. View

16.

Ballouz D, Broderick M, Ozuna-Harrison R, Witten D, Byrnes M, Finks J . Applying to be Doctors of Tomorrow: A Qualitative Study Exploring Motivations Towards Applying to a Medical Pipeline Program. J Natl Med Assoc. 2021; 113(5):531-540. DOI: 10.1016/j.jnma.2021.05.001. View

17.

Cronin M, Alonzo S, Adamczak S, Baker D, Beltran R, Borker A . Anti-racist interventions to transform ecology, evolution and conservation biology departments. Nat Ecol Evol. 2021; 5(9):1213-1223. DOI: 10.1038/s41559-021-01522-z. View

18.

Diamond L, Izquierdo K, Canfield D, Matsoukas K, Gany F . A Systematic Review of the Impact of Patient-Physician Non-English Language Concordance on Quality of Care and Outcomes. J Gen Intern Med. 2019; 34(8):1591-1606. PMC: 6667611. DOI: 10.1007/s11606-019-04847-5. View

19.

Cloutier R, Bumsted T, Mejicano G . The MCAT Was a Barrier to Diversity Long Before COVID-19. Acad Med. 2021; 96(9):e22-e23. PMC: 8378424. DOI: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000004196. View

20.

Tiako M, Ray V, South E . Medical Schools as Racialized Organizations: How Race-Neutral Structures Sustain Racial Inequality in Medical Education-a Narrative Review. J Gen Intern Med. 2022; 37(9):2259-2266. PMC: 9202970. DOI: 10.1007/s11606-022-07500-w. View