Promoting Diversity and Health Equity: Recruitment and Best Practices in Education

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Health Equity
• Diversity and Inclusion in Medicine

Background:

• Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education mandates diverse resident recruitment and retention.
• Academic residency programs face challenges in achieving workforce diversity and aligning with institutional equity goals.
• A multifaceted intervention was developed to address these challenges in recruiting and training residents underrepresented in medicine (URiM).

Purpose of the Study:

• To implement and evaluate a comprehensive intervention aimed at increasing the recruitment and retention of URiM residents.
• To assess the impact of holistic review processes and DEI-integrated curricula on resident diversity.
• To improve the program's alignment with institutional equity goals and national diversity mandates.

Main Methods:

• Implemented a holistic application review process, de-emphasizing traditional metrics like board scores and recommendation letters.
• Integrated a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committee member into the recruitment process and provided bias training to all members.
• Updated curricula to include DEI training, health equity, and quality improvement through a health equity lens.

Main Results:

• The percentage of URiM residents increased from 6.25% pre-intervention to 21.15% post-intervention (P=.043) over a 4-year period.
• Resident survey compliance with DEI measurements exceeded the national specialty mean in nearly all categories.
• The intervention demonstrated a statistically significant increase in URiM resident representation.

Conclusions:

• Holistic changes in recruitment and training directly impacted the successful matching of URiM applicants.
• Curricular and institutional commitments to DEI enhanced the program's ability to attract and match a diverse applicant pool.
• Limitations include reliance on self-reported data and the challenge of isolating the impact of individual interventions.