497 - Building a Diverse Workforce: An Effort to Improve Program Diversity in a Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Fellowship

Poster Number: 497
Publication Number: 497.125

Lauren R. Walker, Medical University of South Carolina College of Medicine, Charleston, SC, United States; David J. Annibale, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, United States; Heidi J.. Steflik, Medical University of South Carolina College of Medicine, Charleston, SC, United States; Mileka Gilbert, Medical University of South Carolina College of Medicine, Charleston, SC, United States

Background: A diverse medical workforce, including under-represented in medicine (URiM) trainees, improves patient outcomes, most notably neonatal mortality. Between 2007-2019 the proportion of URiM fellows within Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine (NPM) fellowship programs nationwide significantly decreased. Within our program, we noted a decrease in the proportion of URiM fellow applicants who accepted interviews between 2019-2021.

Objective: To improve diversity in our own program, we aimed to increase the number of URiM applicants who accept and complete interviews for NPM fellowship at our institution from 56% to 75% in the 2022 recruitment cycle.

Design/Methods: We utilized a quality improvement approach to address our aim. Our quantitative measure was the percentage of URiM applicants to accept and complete interviews for NPM fellowship at our institution. A multi-disciplinary team including program leadership, a current NPM fellow, and the departmental director of diversity and inclusion identified the following areas for improvement: inadequacy of diversity materials on the fellowship website, lack of emphasis on diversity in the interview acceptance email, and absence of visibility of URiM faculty on the interview day. The team selected the following strategies to improve early exposure to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) information for the first Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle: expand DEI links on the fellowship website, emphasize commitment to diversity in the interview acceptance email, advertise virtual diversity happy hours held by the pediatrics department, and offer URiM applicants the opportunity to speak with URiM faculty during their interview day (Figure 1).

Results: The percentage of URiM applicants who accepted and completed interviews for NPM fellowship increased from 56% to 70% in the 2021 and 2022 interview cycles, respectively (Figure 2). This percentage was short of goal of 75% but still a noteworthy improvement.  

Conclusion(s): Efforts to improve physician workforce diversity within the field of NPM are vital to improving health outcomes in the patients we serve. Recruitment strategies highlighting program DEI initiatives have the potential to diversify a program’s applicant pool. Improving early exposure to DEI information increased the number of URiM fellowship applicants who accepted and completed interviews for NPM fellowship. Future directions include obtaining post-interview feedback surveys from URiM applicants to guide future PDSA cycles and increasing program presence at national meetings geared towards URiM physicians.