Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: Over the past decade, holistic review has been implemented to motivate schools' compliance with state and federal laws about how to regard race in admissions processes and decisions.From clinical, ethical, and public health standpoints, physician workforce diversification is widely regarded as foundational to medicine's capacity as a profession to respond justly to the health care needs of a pluralistic nation.In response to a case, this commentary considers merits and limitations of holistic review's roles in advancing health professional workforce diversity and health equity.Case U School of Medicine's mission is to train physicians to serve residents of the state who are recognized by the state's health department as medically underserved, which is defined in terms of inequitable health outcomes in communities inhabited predominantly by people with racially and ethnically minoritized identities.Over half of the state's population resides in these communities, which are both rural and urban.Accreditation standards compliance requires schools to define diversity categories, which, for U, includes students from resource-poor families, women, African Americans, Latinx Americans, Native Americans, and first-generation college graduates.U's admissions committee members holistically review candidates using a rubric that includes applicants' diversity categories, academic performance, service history, life experience, and communities of origin.U admissions committee members deliberate about to whom, from their alternate list, they should offer admission into next year's class.U's usual protocol for drawing on the alternate list is for a subcommittee to determine which alternates will be invited to fill the class.Subcommittee members generally agree that matriculants who have already accepted U's offer of admission are, collectively, well-balanced among rubric categories, except for race.One alternate is a first-generation college graduate from a rural, underserved, resource-poor area of the state.Another, from a suburban community, is a racialized minority group member whose parents are both physicians.One has a better academic record than the other, but the 2 candidates' overall rubric scores are nearly
Source: The AMA Journal of Ethic
Author: Rosa Lee
Institutions: City College of New York, City University of New York
Language: English
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W3217760185