Introduction: As under-represented in medicine (URM) groups are growing in the United States and in US medical schools, their proportional growth in academic medicine may not reflect present population demographics. We aimed to describe the racial representation of urologic academic faculty relative to current urologic residents, current US medical students, as well as national population trends.
Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of active full-time urology faculty according to the American Association of Medical College (AAMC) database as of August 31, 2021. Faculty demographics were self-reported. This was compared to the most recent AUA census data for residents using chi-square tests. For clarity, “other” was used to classify those who did not self-identify as Asian, black, Hispanic, or white. The same criteria were applied to AAMC Diversity in Medicine data for full-time US medical faculty for 2018, which was the most recent publicly available dataset.
Results: Study demographics can be seen in Table 1. Of 435 full-time urology faculty members, 83 (19%) were Asian, 11 (2.5%) were black, 10 (2.3%) were Hispanic, and 315 (72%) were white. The 2019 AUA census included 415 resident respondents which identified as 21% Asian, 3% black, 6% Hispanic, and 68% white. Racial distributions between urologic faculty and residents were significantly different (p=0.001). Greater differences in URM representation existed at associate professor (p < 0.001), assistant professor (p < 0.001), and instructor (p < 0.001) levels. Representation in urology faculty also differed from US medical faculty at professor (p < 0.001), assistant professor (p=0.02), and instructor (p=0.002) levels. Associate professor representation was similar (p=0.08) among urology and US medical faculty.
Conclusions: As of 2021, the racial representation of urology faculty at all ranks significantly differed from that of current urology residents, with a greater proportion of persons in URM groups currently in training compared to faculty. We noted differences in URM representation at most ranks between urology and US medical faculty. Continued recruitment of diverse individuals will improve representation in the field of urology in general and lead to greater representation amongst academic faculty.
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