Promoting diversity in the medical school pipeline: a national overview

The barriers facing those who promote diversity in medical education are growing higher, but the need for diversity is greater than ever. One of the best, most direct ways to attain diversity within medical school populations is simply to produce more applicants who are qualified, so that greater numbers of students from groups underrepresented in medicine can be selected. To maintain and increase the flow of students, medical schools must exert pressure at all points along the educational pipeline and into medical practice. Such pressure can be applied through programs that stimulate and sustain interest in medicine by providing meaningful experiences that prepare students for medical studies and careers. As guest editors of Academic Medicine's April 1999 theme issue on educational programs that strengthen the pipeline to medical school, the authors collected a special set of papers reflecting the variety of such programs offered by academic medical institutions. The articles were solicited by a national call for papers, and eventually 26 papers were selected for inclusion. This set is not a comprehensive list of diversity programs, or even of the types of programs available. Rather, it is a description of replicable programs that the guest editors hope may be useful to their colleagues in medical education, encourage development of new diversity initiatives, or help to build support for ongoing programs.