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Abstract

The 2016 Health Resources and Services Administration, Health Workforce Analysis estimated that ophthalmology is the surgical specialty with the greatest physician shortage. Based on their estimates, the ophthalmology workforce needs to expand by 33% to 22,690 full time equivalents to meet its 2025 patient care demand.[1] Despite the need to expand the ophthalmology workforce, the number of underrepresented in medicine (URiM) ophthalmology trainees decreased from 8.7 to 7.7% between 2005 and 2015.[2] Patients from underrepresented groups, including Black/African Americans, Latinx, American Indians, Alaskan Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, comprised 30.7% of the U.S. population in the same period. [Table 1] summarizes the racial/ethnic composition of the U.S. population, current ophthalmology workforce, and ophthalmology trainee pathway. The disproportionate ratio of URiM ophthalmologists compared with patients likely accounts for a significant portion of the racial/ethnic disparities in care delivery and eye health outcomes.[3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] Ample evidence demonstrates that health care utilization and care outcomes improve with patient–physician racial concordance and that URiM physicians are more likely to work in medically underserved communities.[9] [10] However, despite an increase in the total number of ophthalmology residency training positions offered through the SF Match to meet the patient care demand,[11] the number of URiM physicians matching in ophthalmology residency programs between 2016 and 2020 remained flat at 8.4% per year.[12] As the number of ophthalmology residency training positions increases, specific effort should be made to recruit talented URiM medical students into ophthalmology. Racial concordance is associated with increased cultural competency (providing culturally and linguistically appropriate services) which is expected to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities and improve the quality of health care.[7] The main goal of Rabb–Venable (RV) is to implement interventions to recruit URiM trainees into ophthalmology to reflect the cultural diversity of the community receiving eye care services. This is expected to translate into increased cultural competency and better patient outcomes.

Received Date

November 25, 2020

Accepted Date

May 11, 2021

Online Available Date

December 31, 2021

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