| Dear Colleagues,
The turbulent events since Memorial Day have occupied all of our minds, thoughts amplified by the fear related to the impact of COVID-19 on our health, personal and institutional economics, and way of life. The ANA has devoted significant time and consideration to constructing a meaningful and durable response within our organization to the systemic oppression that has led to the professional and financial inequities that we see exposed today. The ANA is committed to change, and over the next few weeks membership will be read a powerful editorial from the ANA executive committee and the professional development committee to engage us all in a series of steps that we must take as an organization. We have not done enough within our ANA to actively create a welcoming and inclusive organization where ALL can flourish professionally. My own approach has been too passive, centered on “self-education” rather than action As we embark on intentional anti-racist strategies to remake the culture of the ANA I have been reading around the topic of the “diversity paradox”. A recent study of 1.2 million US dissertations from 1977 to 2015 examined the hypothesis that “diversity breeds innovation, yet underrepresented groups (in science) that diversify organizations have less successful careers within them. This research finds that “demographically underrepresented students innovate at higher rates than majority students, but their novel contributions are discounted and less likely to earn academic positions. The discounting of minorities’ innovations may partly explain their underrepresentation in influential positions of academia.”1 As I read this powerful statement, I considered how often I might have followed this same discounting paradox in reviewing grant or article submissions or faculty hires. How often I might have been influenced not by the ideas within the work, but by the name of the applicant, their mentors, or their home institution. Two articles underline this discrimination. One follows institutional standing and, not surprisingly, finds that heightened institutional prestige leads to increased faculty production, better faculty placement, and a more influential position.2 The other, from 2011, tracks NIH research grant funding and notes that proposals with strong priority scores were equally likely to be funded regardless of race, but after controlling for a number of factors including educational background, employer characteristics, country of origin, etc., black applicants were 10% less likely to be awarded funding.3 Since many of our members sit on study sections, or NIH councils, we must take some responsibility for this inequity and work towards true equality of opportunity. In short, we need to actively examine the Gini coefficients4 within our own departments, or own institutes or organizations, and strive to reduce inequality for all.
Warm regards, Justin C. McArthur, MBBS, MPH |