Increasing healthcare workforce diversity: Urban universities as catalysts for change

Increasing the diversity of the healthcare workforce is often cited as a strategy for reducing racial and ethnic health disparities. Colleges and universities are uniquely positioned to influence workforce diversity through their recruitment, admissions, and student support practices, and by partnering with community groups to improve the pipeline of underrepresented racial/ethnic (URE) students pursuing health careers and influence workforce diversity practices in healthcare institutions. In this article, the authors describe a multifaceted initiative implemented by the Academic Health Center (AHC) at the University of Cincinnati (UC) that sought to address each of these areas. The initiative was led by the dean of the College of Nursing and a professor from the College of Medicine, who served as co-principal investigators. Within the university, UC identified improving health disparities and workforce diversity as central to its mission, adopted holistic admissions practices, used social media to strengthen outreach to URE students, and created a diversity dashboard to monitor diversity efforts. Additionally, UC partnered with community groups to expand pipeline programs for URE students and worked with a community advisory board to engage the region's health systems in evaluating their workforce diversity efforts. Within the College of Nursing, the initiative resulted in increased applications from students at pipeline schools, a larger number of URE student admissions, and increased faculty diversity. •A multi-pronged, interprofessional approach to increasing student and healthcare workforce diversity is described.•Changes in support of diversity to university mission, admissions practices, diversity monitoring; engagement of leaders.•Partnering with community groups to strengthen outreach to URE students and diversity practices in healthcare institutions.•Resulted in increased applications from pipeline schools, larger number of URE admissions, increased faculty diversity.