Author Diversity on Clinical Practice Guideline Committees

Abstract

Reports have demonstrated that women overall and women physicians, in particular, are underrepresented as authors of clinical practice guidelines. This analysis used publicly available information to explore the diversity of rehabilitation-related clinical practice guideline authors by gender, race, and ethnicity. Primary analysis identified authors' gender, race, ethnicity, and visible minority status. Two sets were analyzed: (1) clinical practice guidelines by Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) categorized as "Rehabilitation" or "Pain" (n = 7; VA clinical practice guidelines) and (2) a set (n = 10) published in the United States (US) from 2019 to 2021 that were selected because of low numbers of inclusion at less than 20% women authors. Key findings include that among physician authors, both the VA and US clinical practice guidelines underrepresented women (15 [24.2%] and 27 [16.7%], respectively) and those coded as a racial or ethnic minority were particularly underrepresented. Notably, women authors overall were equally represented (92 [50.0%]) in the VA clinical practice guidelines. The US clinical practice guidelines had women authors who were underrepresented (36 [19.0%]). Secondary analysis of the entire set of VA clinical practice guidelines (n = 21) found gaps in diversity-related content. Clinical practice guidelines have far-reaching health and economic impacts, and addressing disparities in the diversity of author teams and/or gaps in diversity-related content is of paramount importance.