Abstract
[This is an excerpt.] Though the United States is an increasingly racially and ethnically diverse and multicultural society, the health care workforce lacks corresponding diversity. Studies demonstrate that a diverse health care workforce can improve patients’ access to and satisfaction with care and health outcomes, and that shared identities between providers and patients may improve health equity (HHS Advisory Committee on Minority Health 2021).
Despite long-standing efforts to increase diversity, health care professions have not achieved equitable representation of Black/African American and Hispanic/Latinx people (HHS Bureau of Health Professions and Office of Minority Health 2009; Morris et al. 2021). To identify promising policies and practices for sustainably increasing diversity in the physician and nursing workforces, the Urban Institute examined pathway programs (also known as pipeline programs) in medicine and nursing. These programs provide academic, financial, and social supports to encourage more students from systemically and structurally excluded groups to enter and remain in health care professions. This study adopts the term systemically and structurally excluded to call attention to the ways that Black/African American and Hispanic/Latinx students and professionals in particular have been locked out of equitable educational and professional opportunities (see box 2). [To read more, click View Resource.]
This resource is found in our Actionable Strategies for Health Organizations: Promoting Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion.
