Diversity in the Gastroenterology Workforce and its Implications for Patients

As the US population has become more diverse, the medical community has advocated for students, faculty, and curricula to reflect these changes. Understanding and addressing a patient’s culture and socioeconomic situation is vital to their well-being, and physicians who share in the cultural backgrounds and lived experiences of their patients are more likely to bring this insight and understanding to medicine.¹ Yet over the last 2 decades, diversity among medical faculty is largely unchanged. One author recently wrote that students who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) would be hard-pressed to find role models that look like them, as these populations are underrepresented among medical faculty.^2-4

In 2020, the upsurge of the Black Lives Matter movement combined with the COVID-19 pandemic’s exposure of health disparities prompted society to better acknowledge socioeconomic inequalities and health organizations to revisit these issues.^5,6 The AGA has introduced many crucial initiatives in collaboration with its Diversity Committee, including the AGA Equity  Project – a multiyear strategic plan designed to: eliminate health disparities and inequities in access, support GI research that aligns with the realities of multicultural patient populations, and educate AGA members and staff about unconscious bias.⁷

Further diversification of the gastroenterology workforce will ultimately benefit all patients – perhaps most notably patients from diverse backgrounds and lived experiences. Diagnosis and treatment outcomes in multiple digestive-tract diseases are disparate across different races and ethnicities. The literature has demonstrated that patients are more comfortable discussing sensitive health issues and undergoing procedures in the care of doctors with whom they share a similar  cultural background.^8,9