Diversity of US healthcare workers

Editor's Note

In this study, researchers from David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Harvard Medical School, Boston, quantify the current representatives of the US healthcare workforce and changes during the past 2 decades.

Among the findings:

• The percentage of White men among physicians and surgeons, pharmacists, and dentists decreased.
• There was little to no increase in Black or Hispanic men among physicians and surgeons, pharmacists, and dentists.
• There were increases in Black and Hispanic women among physicians and surgeons, pharmacists, and dentists, but increases among White and Asian women were larger.
• Nurses, therapists, and healthcare aides had increases across most minority subgroups.

The study included 1,648,924 individuals across 6 healthcare occupations.