Cancer Care Workforce Diversity

The racial and ethnic distribution of the cancer workforce contrasts starkly with that of the general population. Only 2-3% of oncologists identify as Black or Latinx, compared to 13% and 18% of the U.S. population, respectively. While evidence from the business literature suggests that diversity in teams impacts organizational performance, it is not known whether provider team diversity as well as patient-provider racial and ethnic concordance is associated with quality of cancer-related care and outcomes. Through a novel linkage of data from the American Medical Association and Association of American Medical Colleges with the SEER-Medicare data, we will test the hypothesis that the racial and ethnic representation of the oncology workforce varies across regions and patient-sharing networks and that this variation is associated with clinical care.

Funding source: NIH (NIMHD)

Principal Investigator: Cary Gross and Dowin Boatright (NYU Langone Health)