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American Pediatric Society
November 2013

Pediatric Faculty Diversity: A New Landscape for Academic Pediatrics in the 21st Century

Author Affiliations
  • 1Division of Adolescent Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Seattle
  • 2Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Seattle
JAMA Pediatr. 2013;167(11):989-990. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.3241

Academic pediatrics has not kept pace with the changing demographics in the United States population and the children and families we serve. By 2020, the majority of children and adolescents in the United States will come from ethnic minority backgrounds. We will have a new “majority minority” population, with Latino and Asian ethnicities contributing the largest proportion.1,2 This change in demographics is significant because health care disparities occur disproportionately in those who will soon make up the largest proportion of the US population. To date, pediatric organizations have not developed national strategies to respond specifically to the ethnic diversity in our pediatric population. Doing so is critical to ensuring excellence in our profession and our professional societies. Because the impact of the dramatic changes in US demographics is manifesting first in the pediatric population, we must lead the medical profession in creating a national strategy to address organizational change in the academic and practice workforce and thus ensure the best health outcomes in the 21st century.

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