What Is the Role of Accreditation in Achieving Medical School Diversity?

Abstract

Diversity standards in medical education accreditation do not guarantee diversity but do stimulate schools’ activities to recruit and retain diverse students and faculty. The Liaison Committee on Medical Education’s (LCME’s) accreditation standard addressing medical school diversity neither mandates which categories of diversity medical schools must use nor defines quantitative outcomes they should achieve. Rather, each medical school is required to (1) identify diversity categories that motivate its mission and reflect its environment and (2) use those categories to implement programs to promote diverse representation of students and faculty. When the LCME assesses each medical school’s compliance with these requirements, it considers single point-in-time diversity numbers, trends in student and faculty diversity, and outcomes of programs implemented by the school to promote diversity in the categories it identifies as key to its mission.