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The Health Workforce Diversity Initiative is helping to promote greater racial and ethnic parity in the health workforce through measurement and accountability.
In terms of inequalities in healthcare, an issue of the highest concern, deepening the diversity of the workforce is an optimal strategy to address racial disparities. But this goal remains elusive without accurate data on the composition of the workforce, the pipeline, and clear benchmarks for organizations to strive toward.
The Health Workforce Diversity Initiative is dedicated to addressing under-representation among healthcare workers by analyzing data on the diversity of the health workforce and the educational pipeline across thirty health occupations, from front-line workers to physicians.
A Diversity Index examines the relative percentage of graduates (or practitioners) in a health profession compared to the percentage of individuals in the population of that race/ethnicity. Using this data, the Tracker will provide regular “report cards” on representation efforts by states, professions, and institutions, as well as an interactive data exploration tool. The Tracker is a project of the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity and the Social Mission Alliance.
New report: The Race and Ethnicity of the Florida Health Workforce
Why We Need A Diverse Health Workforce
Black/African-American, Latinx/Hispanic, and Native American individuals are under-represented in health professions. A more diverse workforce leads to:
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- Increasing access and quality of healthcare
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- Advancing cultural competency of all providers
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- Strengthening and broadening medical research
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- Improving optimal management of the healthcare system
Related Research
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- Documenting Latino Representation in the US Health Workforce (Islas et al., 2023)
- Assessing the Racial and Ethnic Diversity of Physician Assistant/Associate Program Graduates from 2010 to 2012 and 2019 to 2021 (Ritesma et al., 2024)
- Black and Hispanic Representation Declined After Increased Degree Requirements for Physician Assistants (Herring et al., 2024)
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- Limited, uneven progress is increasing racial and ethnic diversity of dental school graduates (Salsberg et al., 2021)
- Health Workforce for Health Equity (Pittman et al., 2021)
