Affirmative action bans had ‘devastating impact’ on diversity in medical schools, UCLA-led study finds

New UCLA-led research finds that in states with bans on affirmative action programs, the proportion of students from underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups in U.S. public medical schools fell by more than one-third by five years after those bans went into effect.The findings are particularly timely given medical schools ’ increasing emphasis on health equity, including a push to ensure greater diversity among physicians in the workforce.The study will be published May 3 in the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Internal Medicine.“We know that a more diverse physician workforce leads to better care for racial- and ethnic-minority patients,” said Dr. Dan Ly, the study’s lead author, an assistant professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at theDavid Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.“But we have made such poor progress in diversifying our physician workforce.“Our research shows that bans on affirmative action, like the one California passed in 1996, have had a devastating impact on the diversity of our medical student body and physician pipeline.”The researchers examined enrollment data from 1985 through 2019 for 53 medical schools at public universities, focusing on students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups: Black, Hispanic, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. The authors studied medical schools at public universities, not private ones, because...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news