Little to no increase in Black or Hispanic men in some medical roles since 2000

There was little to no increase in the percentage of Black or Hispanic men among physicians, surgeons, pharmacists and dentists between 2000 and 2019, according to findings published in JAMA Network Open.

“Despite evidence that greater diversity among health care workers may allow them to better care for patients with diverse cultural, social, economic and clinical needs, data are limited on trends in diversity and representativeness of U.S. health care workers by occupation,” Dan P. Ly, MD, PhD, MPP, an assistant professor in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a hospitalist at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, and colleagues wrote.

In a cross-sectional study, Ly and colleagues analyzed data from 1,648,924 individuals (79% women) across six occupations: physicians and surgeons, pharmacists, dentists, therapists, nurses and health care aides. The data were derived from the Decennial Census in 2000 and the American Community Survey from 2001 to 2019.

The researchers separated data into four groups of ethnicities — non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic Asian and Hispanic — then estimated the composition of select health care occupations by race/ethnicity and sex in 2000 to 2004 and 2015 to 2019. The researchers used linear regression to calculate the change in percentage in each race/ethnicity and sex subgroup between the two periods.

Ly and colleagues observed little to no change in the percentage of men from underrepresented groups from 2000 to 2019 in certain occupations. Among physicians and surgeons, the difference in percentage points between 2001 to 2014 and 2015 to 2019 was 0.2 (95% CI, -0.2 to 0.6) for Hispanic men and -0.1 (95% CI, -0.5 to 0.2) for Black men. Among pharmacists, the difference in percentage points was -0.3 (95% CI, -0.9 to 0.2) for Hispanic men and -0.06 (95% CI, -0.8 to 0.6) for Black men. In addition, among dentists, the difference in percentage points was 0.8 (95% CI, 0.07-1.6) for Hispanic men and -0.5 (95% CI, -1.1 to 0.1) for Black men.

In contrast, there was a significant increase in both Black and Hispanic women in these occupations, and there was an even larger increase in white and Asian women, according to the researchers.

“Altogether, increases in representation of these four subgroups of women were accompanied by large declines in the proportion of white men. Other health care occupations, such as nurses, therapists and health care aides, had increases across most minority subgroups during the examined period,” Ly and colleagues wrote. “These results quantify the current representativeness of the U.S. health care workforce and changes in its composition during the past two decades.”