Most of the focus on healthcare reform has understandably centered
around the Affordable Care Act and on insurance reform. An often
overlooked, but critically important factor for health reform success, is an
exemplary-trained, diverse workforce.
Diversity is a critical issue in the health professions workforce. We need
to create a healthcare workforce to care for our diverse communities—a
workforce that mirrors these communities. We can’t wait for people to
simply seek health professions careers, but must develop robust pipelines
to the health professions, beginning in primary education and supported
by intrusive advising, mentoring, and role modeling. Diversifying the
work force is a long-term endeavor that cannot be accomplished in
three years; it’s at least a ten-year commitment. The program must be
sustainable over this substantial period of time.
Academic health centers can be successful in diversifying their workforce
by engaging their diverse communities and securing the community’s
active participation. Our program reaches out to nontraditional
community outlets, including churches and civic centers, to identify
students in the pipeline who may have an interest in the health
professions. If we can improve educational opportunities, we won’t
just be diversifying the healthcare workforce, we will also be bringing
economic vitality to the community. We have a very active community
advisory board made up of key stakeholders from across the Cleveland
area. As a program matures, its leaders and constituents can lose sight of
the original vision. The community advisory board ensures that we are
always cognizant of our mission and that we continue to serve the needs
of the community.
None of this can happen unless there’s support from the leadership at
the institution. In our case, we have the commitment from the senior
leadership across the entire institution, and they have made diversity a
high priority institution-wide. You can’t be successful simply by instituting
a program several layers down in the bureaucracy—you must have the
leadership from the entire institution behind you.
We also have to recognize that this is not a single issue, but a broad
array of healthcare concerns. There are multiple concerns to address,
including funding, access to care, and economics. We engage the
state, corporations, and the local community in our efforts, and we use
qualitative and quantitative data to consistently examine our progress
and adjust our course.
There is a business case to be made for these efforts. If we can provide
a diverse workforce for diverse communities, we will see improved
prevention, increased access to care, and reduced costs.
Jay A. Gershen, DDS, PhD
President,
Northeast Ohio Medical University
Sonja Haywood, MD
Director,
NEOMED-CSU
Partnership for Urban Health
Jeffrey L. Susman, MD
Dean,
College of Medicine
Northeast Ohio Medical University