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. 2018 Aug;7(4):526-534.
doi: 10.21037/tau.2018.05.16.

Racial distribution of urology workforce in United States in comparison to general population

Samuel L Washington 3rd  1 , Nima Baradaran  1 , Thomas W Gaither  1 , Mohannad A Awad  1 , Gregory P Murphy  1 , Tracy M Downs  2 , Benjamin N Breyer  1   3
Affiliations

Racial distribution of urology workforce in United States in comparison to general population

Samuel L Washington 3rd et al. Transl Androl Urol. 2018 Aug.

Abstract

Background: To compare the current racial/ethnic characteristics of practicing urologists to the U.S. population by American Urological Association (AUA) census geographic region.

Methods: We compared urologist demographics from the 2014 AUA census to U.S. census data. Underrepresented in medicine (URM) status was defined as African-American (AA) or Hispanic race/ethnicity. Percent differences by AUA section were calculated by subtracting weighted frequencies of race/ethnicity for urologists from the general population. A negative percent difference denotes underrepresentation of urologists relative to the general population; positive percent difference denotes overrepresentation.

Results: URM urologists (n=728, 6.5%) were younger and more often female than non-URM counterparts. Overall, AA and Hispanic urologists were underrepresented in most sections while Caucasian and Asian urologists were overrepresented. AA urologists were most underrepresented in the East South-Central section (-34.4%). Hispanic urologists (-38%) were most underrepresented in the Pacific section (-38%). Overall, the percentage of URM urologists, compared to non-URM urologists, were highest in the South Atlantic [37.9% (276/728) vs. 19.2% (1,984/10,319), P<0.01] and West South-Central [15.9% (116/728) vs. 11.1% (1,143/10,319), P<0.01].

Conclusions: URM urologists tend to be younger with a higher proportion of female providers, indicating a shift in race and gender. URM urologists were most underrepresented in the East South-Central and Pacific sections.

Keywords: Diversity; under-representation; urology.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Comparison of racial/ethnic distributions between the general population and urologist population, stratified by AUA census region. AUA, American Urological Association.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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