Here’s a breakdown of teh information you’ve provided, focusing on the key findings about racial and ethnic depiction among physicians:
Key Findings:
Asian Physicians:
Overrepresented in most states: The share of Asian physicians was generally higher than the share of the Asian population in most states.
Notable examples: California showed a meaningful difference (32% of providers vs.15% of the population).
Smaller differences in some states: States like Alaska, Montana, and vermont had smaller disparities, where Asian people were a small part of both the population and the provider pool.
White Physicians:
Similar or higher representation: In most states, the proportion of White physicians was similar to or exceeded their proportion in the general population.
Underrepresentation in some states: West Virginia (67% vs.90%), North Dakota (67% vs. 83%), and Michigan (58% vs. 73%) were states where White people were most underrepresented among physicians. This underrepresentation was linked to higher representation of Asian physicians in these states.
Overrepresentation in other states: New Mexico (56% vs. 37%), alaska (77% vs. 58%), and Mississippi (70% vs. 55%) were states where White people were most overrepresented among physicians.
Hispanic and Black Physicians:
Underrepresented in most specialties: A similar pattern of underrepresentation was observed for Hispanic and Black individuals across medical specialties.
Primary care specialties better reflect population: Specialties like family medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics/gynecology tended to have a racial and ethnic distribution closer to the general population.
Least representation in specific specialties: Nephrology and interventional cardiology had the least racial and ethnic representation compared to the national population.
Hispanic underrepresentation: The Hispanic population was the most underrepresented group in over half of the analyzed specialties (27 out of 51).
Black underrepresentation: The Black population was the most underrepresented group in 9 out of 51 specialties.
Methods:
Data Source: U.S. physician Workforce data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) for 2023.
Population Data: 5-year estimates from the 2023 American Community Survey.
Race/Ethnicity Handling:
Race/ethnicity data was provided as “alone or in combination” but treated as exclusive in the analysis due to a “multiracial” option.
Respondents with unknown race/ethnicity were proportionally distributed.
Only Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White categories were used for provider specialty analysis, focusing on specialties with over 5,000 active physicians.
Population data used single-response values for “not Hispanic or Latino” and any response for “Hispanic or Latino.”
Analysis Metrics:
Index of Dissimilarity: Used to measure how well the active physician population matches the national population for each specialty, based on the percentage point difference in race/ethnicity share.
Kullback-Leibler divergence: Calculated to assess the robustness of the method, measuring the statistical distance between the physician race/ethnicity distribution and the national population. The rank order of specialties was similar for both methods.
In essence, the data highlights disparities in physician representation across racial and ethnic groups, with Asian physicians generally overrepresented and Hispanic and Black physicians often underrepresented, especially in certain medical specialties.White physicians tend to be well-represented or overrepresented in most states.
