Refining a method of identifying CUNY Medical School graduates practicing in underserved areas

To determine what percentage of graduates from the City University of New York (CUNY) Medical School/Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education practiced in underserved areas of New York State and, in the process, to develop a reliable way of collecting and verifying the information needed to carry out such an outcomes study.

The study group consisted of the 414 CUNY graduates who had completed their MD degrees by 1986. Addresses of graduates' practices were confirmed for 79% of the graduates, 49% of whom practiced in New York State. New York State zip codes were used as a way to identify underserved areas throughout the state.

Of the 160 graduates with practices in New York State, 33% had practices in underserved areas (and 81% of these were located in New York City). In all, 26% of the whites, 73% of the African Americans, 43% of the Asian Americans, 50% of the Latinos, 34% of the women, and 32% of the men had practices in underserved areas.

The graduates' race-ethnicity was an important factor in the likelihood of their practicing in an underserved area, whereas gender was not, a finding consistent with previous studies. Medical schools and residency programs need to institute long-term programs to track the career paths of all their graduates so that questions about the proportions of graduates in underserved areas will be relatively easy to answer.