Racial distribution of urology workforce in United States in comparison to general population

Abstract

Background: To compare the current racial/ethnic characteristics of practicing urologists to the U.S. population by American Urological Association (AUA) census geographic region. Methods: We compared urologist demographics from the 2014 AUA census to U.S. census data. Underrepresented in medicine (URM) status was defined as African-American (AA) or Hispanic race/ethnicity. Percent differences by AUA section were calculated by subtracting weighted frequencies of race/ethnicity for urologists from the general population. A negative percent difference denotes underrepresentation of urologists relative to the general population; positive percent difference denotes overrepresentation. Results: URM urologists (n=728, 6.5%) were younger and more often female than non-URM counterparts. Overall, AA and Hispanic urologists were underrepresented in most sections while Caucasian and Asian urologists were overrepresented. AA urologists were most underrepresented in the East South- Central section (-34.4%). Hispanic urologists (-38%) were most underrepresented in the Pacific section (-38%). Overall, the percentage of URM urologists, compared to non-URM urologists, were highest in the South Atlantic [37.9% (276/728) vs. 19.2% (1,984/10,319), P<0.01] and West South-Central [15.9% (116/728) vs. 11.1% (1,143/10,319), P<0.01]. Conclusions: URM urologists tend to be younger with a higher proportion of female providers, indicating a shift in race and gender. URM urologists were most underrepresented in the East South-Central and Pacific sections.