Representation of women in oncology improving, but some groups still lag behind
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Representation of women in both radiation oncology and medical oncology has improved over time; however, individuals from otherwise underrepresented racial and ethnic groups have continued to lag.
These data come from a study by Sophia C. Kamran, MD, and colleagues, published in JAMA Oncology. They performed a cross-sectional analysis of data from the Association of American Medical Colleges to analyze trends in academic faculty representation by sex and by race and ethnicity for radiation oncology and medical oncology departments in the U.S.
“The U.S. cancer population is diversifying and, thus, it is imperative that future generations of oncologists are prepared to care for an increasingly diverse population,” Kamran, a radiation oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and assistant professor of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School, told Healio in an interview. “Unfortunately, stark health disparities among cancer patients exist, particularly among racial/ethnic minorities. However, increased workforce diversity has been identified as one solution — among many — that can help combat these disparities.”
Kamran added that academic oncology faculty are generally responsible for training the next generation of oncologists.
“It has been documented that a diverse faculty can aid with recruitment and retainment of diverse trainees,” she said. “Despite prior calls to increase workforce diversity in medicine, it is unclear how this directly translates to the academic oncology workforce more specifically. Therefore, we wanted to evaluate progress in academic oncology faculty diversity over 5 decades, focusing specifically on academic medical and radiation oncology departments.”
From 1970 to 2019, the proportion of women faculty increased in radiation oncology (8.4% vs. 29.1%) and medical oncology (12.6% vs. 38.1%).
Researchers further looked at underrepresented-in-medicine (URM) racial and ethnic groups that included Black, Hispanic and Indigenous individuals and found a significant increase among women faculty from those groups in radiation oncology departments (0.1% per decade; 95% CI, 0.005-0.11), but the difference did not reach significance for medical oncology (0.1% per decade; 95% CI, 0.03-0.16).
The proportion of women faculty from non-URM groups significantly increased for radiation oncology (0.4%; 95% CI, 0.25-0.8) and medical oncology (0.7%; 95% CI, 0.47-0.87).
“[These data are] important as [they provide] a very detailed overview of the medical and radiation oncology academic workforce over 50 years and help us understand where we have gained and where we lag in representation,” Kamran said.
Kamran and colleagues also analyzed faculty trends by rank. The proportion of women increased more than the proportion of URM individuals among radiation and medical oncology faculty among different ranks. Still, Kamran and colleagues found more men held positions of advanced academic rank.
Additionally, there was a higher proportion of women faculty members with more advanced rank at the end of modern decades (1999, 2009 and 2019) among medical oncology faculty than among radiation oncology faculty.
“We see that the number of women in both specialties has increased, although when stratifying by academic rank, women have had lower academic rank than men throughout the study period,” Kamran said.
She continued that URM men have had particularly stagnant growth, whereas URM women have made minimal gains.
“Essentially, [these data demonstrate] that more progress is necessary to both improve recruitment and retention of a diverse oncology workforce, as the current academic workforce does not reflect the diversity of the U.S. cancer population, nor of the medical school population,” Kamran said. “This analysis can serve as a benchmark with which to compare future progress as well.”
Finally, Kamran and colleagues analyzed diversity trends in the modern era by comparing rates across different areas, from clinical departments to medical school applicants, along with the 2019 U.S. population.
Department chairs across all clinical departments had the lowest representation of women in 2019 (17%). From the analysis focused on URM individuals, the highest proportions after U.S. population (31%) were medical school applicants (18%) and matriculants (17%), followed by medical school graduates (11%), radiation oncology residency applicants (13%) and medical oncology residency applicants (10%).
“Our field needs to recognize the importance of a diverse workforce, and more work needs to be done to understand barriers and shortcomings of our current approaches to recruit and retain diverse individuals,” Kamran said. “The increase in number of women faculty in both specialties may help to inform measures to achieve progress among URM faculty, but more needs to be done urgently so that the oncology workforce does not continue to fall behind in terms of representation. All cancer centers and relevant stakeholders must support deliberate investment into recruitment, as well as career development and advancement of both women and URM faculty in oncology.”
Reference:
For more information:
Sophia Kamran, MD, can be reached at skamran@mgh.harvard.edu.
Collapse
Healio Interview
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts