Proactive Steps to Ensure our Workforce Looks Like the Communities We Serve

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis for admission. 

Though University Hospitals is, of course, not a college or university, we partner closely with several of them throughout the country to train medical professionals.

We recognize that this decision came as a huge blow to our communities of color.

Research has shown that diversity in health care providers leads to improved outcomes and longer lives for patients of diverse backgrounds, and addressing this is a priority.

Rest assured, University Hospitals will continue to advance diversity and inclusion initiatives. 

We are committed to building an inclusive, encouraging, and caring culture where all can thrive. As part of that commitment, we will continue to do everything we can to ensure that our future health care workforce looks like, and comes from, backgrounds similar to the broad spectrum of patients we serve.

While it is true that the pool of available applicants from underserved backgrounds to medical schools will likely get smaller, we will aggressively ensure that our recruiting efforts are wide and deep. In order to continue to build trust, within UH and throughout all of our communities, we will double-down on all our efforts. 

It’s important to note that we do have many programs and efforts already in place, including some that focus on our youth, to encourage consideration of health care careers long before they become college or university students. 

Examples include:

• The UH Health Scholars Program (UHHSP), which is designed to recruit and help underrepresented minority students understand health and health care while allowing them to engage with programming in various health care fields. It is a continuous six-year internship, beginning in eighth grade, which is aimed at building upon students' existing talents, skills and gifts while preparing them for health care careers after high school. Health Scholars are nurtured with the thoughtful support of UH clinicians, practitioners and partners. Since its inception in 2016, 138 scholars have participated.
• The David Satcher Clerkship hosts underrepresented in medicine (URIM) medical students from across the country during this paid 4th-year elective rotation, offering hands-on clinical elective experiences and exposing students to career opportunities in academic medicine. Our program was a trailblazer and the first of its kind in the nation to focus on the recruitment of URIM students when it began in 1991. Since then, more than 600 medical students have gone through our Satcher program, with some later returning as residents and attending physicians at UH. 
• The Black Men in White Coats Youth Summit, in collaboration with Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, was designed to spark the interest of Black and Brown youth to consider careers as nurses, doctors, scientists and advanced practice providers. During our inaugural Summit last year, about 300 participated and we anticipate approximately 500 for our fall 2023 event, which will be called Future Shades in Medicine.  
• Healthcare Anchor Network’s Impact Workforce Commitment – Together with Cleveland Clinic and MetroHealth, UH has promised to continue building a more diverse health care workforce, having pledged to increase hiring, training and promotion of diverse talent, especially providing opportunities for people who may face barriers to employment because of low income, a lack of access to education and training or other socioeconomic challenges. To date, we are actually exceeding our commitment metrics.

In addition, UH is conducting a significant amount of focused research on health disparities. Examples include: a research team at UH Seidman Cancer Center investigating whether guiding Black patients with breast or prostate cancer through a shorter course of radiation therapy can lead to better outcomes; a study from UH Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute showing a link between historical redlining and an increase in contemporary cardiometabolic health risk factors led to an $18.2 million federal grant from the National Institutes of Health to provide cardiovascular care to people living in the affected area; and a research team from UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, with funding from the NIH, will be developing and testing a novel method of addressing persistent racial disparities among Black children and teens with type 1 diabetes. 

We also know that it’s crucial to enhance access to clinical trials to diverse populations so that more people can benefit from new therapies. This requires us to ensure our researchers are more diverse, which is a priority.

Our UH Clinical Research Center is hard at work cultivating a clinical research workforce that looks like the population we serve, by utilizing dozens of touchpoints across Northeast Ohio – from high school and college career fairs to student job shadowing and internship experiences. 

Our University Hospitals founders pledged that the most needy should be considered the most worthy. We have a duty to uphold this institution’s legacy of caring for our entire community. And to do that effectively, we need to ensure our UH caregiver team comprises an ever increasing number of people of diverse backgrounds, races and ethnicities. 

Our goal is to be the most trusted health care partner in Northeast Ohio. To realize this aim, we must do everything in our power to make sure our patients have superior care experiences, and that starts with having a roster of providers to whom they can relate and trust.

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