Abstract
Introduction
Previous studies have identified the need to improve recruitment and retention of faculty who are underrepresented in medicine (URiM); however, it is unclear to what extent medical schools have been able to sustain growth and retain URiM faculty representation.
Methods
Numbers of URiM faculty at each AAMC medical school from 2012 to 2021 were obtained from the Association of American Medical Colleges Faculty Administrative Management Online User System database. Year-over-year percent change was calculated for each school and year of the study period for all URiM faculty, junior URiM faculty, and senior URiM faculty. Pearson's correlation was used to compare percent change in 1 year to the previous and subsequent years for all three groups. Pearson's correlation coefficients were also used to compare percent change between junior and senior URiM faculty for the same, previous, and subsequent years.
Results
The percentage change for URiM faculty at all ranks between adjacent years occurring from 2012 to 2021 was weakly and negatively associated (r = − 0.06, p value = 0.03). There was significant positive correlation between the percent change in junior URiM faculty and senior URiM faculty in the same year (r = 0.11) and previous year (r = 0.09).
Discussion
URiM faculty growth in 1 year is not sustained in the next year. More research is needed to better understand efforts at retention of URiM faculty in academic medicine.
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Data Availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available to constituents at participating medical schools from The Association of American Medical Colleges at https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/faculty-institutions/faculty-roster. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for this study.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge Tibor Kisel, MPH for her assistance in the preparation of this manuscript and Christen Walcher, MPAff for editing and formatting the manuscript.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Karen E. Schlag. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Kendall M Campbell and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Collazo, A., Schlag, K.E., Nicanord, E. et al. Are We Really Retaining URiM Faculty in Academic Medicine?. J. Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-024-02020-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-024-02020-1