Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Jul 18;23(1):514.
doi: 10.1186/s12909-023-04500-0.

Predictors of applicant pool racial and ethnic diversity among physician assistant education programs: a national cross-sectional cohort study

Trenton J Honda  1 , Daytheon Sturges  2 , Daphne C Mills  3 , Cynthia X Yuen  4 , Ryan W Chitwood  5 , José E Rodríguez  6   7
Affiliations

Predictors of applicant pool racial and ethnic diversity among physician assistant education programs: a national cross-sectional cohort study

Trenton J Honda et al. BMC Med Educ. .

Abstract

Background: Numerous studies have demonstrated that the increasing racial and ethnic diversity of the US population benefits from access to healthcare providers from similarly diverse backgrounds. Physician assistant (PA) education programs have striven to increase the diversity of the profession, which is predominantly non-Hispanic white, by focusing on admitting students from historically excluded populations. However, strategies such as holistic admissions are predicated on the existence of racially and ethnically diverse applicant pools. While studies have examined correlates of matriculation into a medical education program, this study looks earlier in the pipeline and investigates whether applicant - not matriculant - pool diversity varies among PA programs with different characteristics.

Methods: Data were drawn from the 2017-2018 Central Application Service for PAs admissions cycle. Applications to programs with pre-professional tracks and applicants missing race/ethnicity data were excluded, resulting in data from 26,600 individuals who applied to 189 PA programs. We summarized the racial and ethnic diversity of each program's applicant pools using: [1]the proportion of underrepresented minority (URM) students, [2]the proportion of students with backgrounds underrepresented in medicine (URiM), and [3]Simpson's diversity index of a 7-category race/ethnicity combination. We used multiple regressions to model each diversity metric as a function of program characteristics including class size, accreditation status, type of institution, and other important features.

Results: Regardless of the demographic diversity metric examined, we found that applicant diversity was higher among provisionally accredited programs and those receiving more applications. We also identified trends suggesting that programs in more metropolitan areas were able to attract more diverse applicants. Programs that did not require the GRE were also able to attract more diverse applicants when considering the URM and SDI metrics, though results for URiM were not statistically significant.

Conclusions: Our findings provide insights into modifiable (e.g., GRE requirement) and non-modifiable (e.g., provisionally accredited) program characteristics that are associated with more demographically diverse applicant pools.

Keywords: Matriculation.; Medical Education; Physician Assistant/Associate; Race/Ethnicity; Underrepresented minority.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Distribution of racial/ethnic diversity outcomes in the study cohort
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Associations between applicant pool diversity metrics and program characteristics
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Census.Gov. US Census Quick Facts. 2022.
    1. Saha S, Taggart SH, Komaromy M, Bindman AB. Do patients choose physicians of their own race? To provide the kind of care consumers want, medical schools might be able to justify using race as an admissions criterion. Health Aff. 2000;19(4):76–83. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.19.4.76. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Kerssens JJ, Bensing JM, Andela MG. Patient preference for genders of health professionals. Soc Sci Med. 1997;44(10):1531–40. doi: 10.1016/S0277-9536(96)00272-9. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Schindelheim GL, Jerrard DA, Witting M. Patient preference for emergency physician age and gender. Am J Emerg Med. 2004;22(6):503. doi: 10.1016/j.ajem.2004.07.011. - DOI - PubMed
    1. VanderMeulen S, Snyder JA, Kohlhepp W, Alexander LM, Straker H, Bowser J, et al. Pipeline to the physician assistant profession: a look to the future. J Physician Assistant Educ. 2022;33(1):e1–e10. doi: 10.1097/JPA.0000000000000414. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources