P033 Moving the Needle on Speaker Diversity at AIBD

Diversity of invited speakers at academic conferences is a topic of increased focus in recent years. While there have been efforts to improve speaker diversity, an evaluation of this in the IBD field has not been undertaken to date. We aimed to address gaps in knowledge of speaker gender, race, and experience at a major annual IBD conference over time.

AIBD program brochures from 2014 to 2020 were reviewed by two providers to evaluate speaker demographic information including gender, race, topic of discussion, institutional affiliation, and, for those trained in gastroenterology, years post-fellowship. In addition, the proportion of all-male panels was calculated. As a comparator, the proportion of female speakers and all-male panels was then compared to a control conference run by the same CME organization (Personalized Therapies in Thoracic Oncology).

The percentage of female speakers of any specialty at AIBD increased from 25% in 2016 to 39% in 2020. Female adult gastroenterologist speakers increased from 12% in 2015 to 27% in 2020. The percentage of all gastroenterologists that are female in the US is 19%. All-male panels also decreased from an average of 47% in 2014-2017, to 11% in 2018-2020. As a comparator, 47% of speakers at the control conference were female and there were no all-male panels in 2020. For race, in any given year an average of 13% of speakers were Asian, 5% Hispanic/Latinx, and 1% Black. This remained static over time. The percentage of Asian, Hispanic/Latinx, and Black gastroenterologists in the US is 29%, 5%, and 6%, respectively. Average years of experience of speakers at AIBD appeared relatively static, with a mean of 15 years since fellowship training per speaker.

From 2014-2020, the proportion of female speakers at AIBD has increased to over one third in main programming. There remains room for improvement, particularly in increasing the racial and ethnic diversity of speakers and inviting more gastroenterologists in the early stages of their careers.