U.S. medical schools are admitting more female and minority students a decade after diversity standards were introduced by a national accrediting body.
According to Yale researchers, the recently introduced standards are correlated with an increase in both the number and proportion of applicants from previously underrepresented groups, suggesting that the pool of minority talent is sufficient to boost diversity.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Disparities in the physician workforce have long existed, and as recently as a decade ago representation of women and African-Americans among all medical school students appeared to be in decline. In 2009, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the accrediting body for medical school education programs, introduced new standards intended to boost diversity among qualified applicants.
The new standards required medical-degree-granting institutions to develop a mission-appropriate diversity policy, and maintain ongoing systematic recruitment and retention efforts to achieve diversity outcomes.
To evaluate the impact of the standards on diversity, the researchers compiled data on the gender, race and ethnicity of matriculants at accredited med schools between 2002 and 2017.
The research team found that in the years after the LCME standards were introduced, the percentage of female, African-American and Latino medical school matriculants increased, with the largest gains recorded for women.
“The standards do make a difference,” wrote lead author Dowin Boatright, assistant professor of emergency medicine at Yale. “It is a tool that diversity advocates didn’t have before to implement diversity programs.”
Examples of such programs include specialized high schools that expose disadvantaged students to math and sciences, as well as programs that accept students to both undergraduate and medical school at the same time. “The next step in research is to determine how individual schools are approaching the challenge of increasing diversity, and identifying best practices,” he said.
The study was supported by Yale School of Medicine’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion, Community Engagement and Equity.
Contact Michael C. Bingham at mbingham@newhavenbiz.com
