American Black Authorship Has Decreased Across All Clinical Specialties Despite an Increasing Number of Black Physicians Between 1990 and 2020 in the USA

Abstract

Purpose: Many diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives assume that attainment of a racially diverse healthcare workforce will translate to increased diversity elsewhere in the healthcare system (e.g., leadership roles or academic authorship). We sought to investigate these trends over time by examining the evolution of physician demographics in the USA, in concert with demographic changes in US authorship in US medical journals from 1990 to 2020 across 25 specialties.

Methods: We reviewed all articles indexed in PubMed, with a primary author affiliation located in the USA and limited to journals based in the USA, relative to the proportion of medical professionals in the CMS National Provider Registry. We employed a previously peer-reviewed/validated algorithm called "averaging-of-proportions" that probabilistically predicts racial identity from surname using the US Census to assess the relationship between diversity among medical professionals and diversity in medical journal authorship.

Results: Data reveals a sharp disconnect between the demographic breakdown of physicians and authors. Despite an increase in the number of Black physicians (from 8.5% in 2005 to 9.1% in 2020), there has been a decrease in Black early-career authorship from 7.2% in 1990 to 5.8% in 2020. The percentage of Black early-career authors across all specialties in 2020 is lower than the average per specialty in 1990. Similar trends were noted for Black senior authorship, decreasing from 7.6% in 1990 to 6.2% in 2020, as well as a plateau in Hispanic authorship over the same time interval despite an increasing number of Hispanic physicians.

Conclusion: Modest advances in physician diversity have not translated to increased diversity in academic authorship. Increasing diversity requires initiatives focused beyond recruitment of underrepresented minorities to medical schools or residencies.

Keywords: Academic authorship; Black authorship; Clinical research; Medical journals; Racial minorities; USA; Underrepresentation.