New Century Scholars: A Mentorship Program to Increase Workforce Diversity in Academic Pediatrics

Abstract

This article describes a program aimed to increase workforce diversity and underrepresented minority (URM) representation in academic pediatric medicine. The New Century Scholars (NCScholars) program is a core program in the Academic Pediatric Association, the largest national organization for academic pediatric generalists. The program selects URM pediatric (or medicine-pediatrics) residents who are interested in academic careers and provides each NCScholar with a junior and senior mentor, as well as travel grants to the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting where activities specific to the program are held, and provides ongoing mentorship and career counseling support.The authors discuss the origination, operation, and changes to the program over the first 10 years of its existence, as well as outcome data for the participants in the program. To date, 60 of the 63 NCScholars have finished residency and/or have made postresidency plans, and 38 of these URM pediatricians (63%) have entered academic careers. The authors suggest that this type of mentorship program for URM pediatric trainees can be used as a model for other specialties and medical organizations.