Newswise — The AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) announced a new marketing campaign today to encourage more minority students to choose medicine as a career. AspiringDocs.org is both a Web site and an outreach effort to provide undergraduate minority students with the support, information, and guidance they need to apply to and enroll in medical school.
The need for a more diverse physician workforce is growing increasingly urgent as the nation's racial and ethnic diversity increases and a nationwide physician shortage looms. While African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos and Native Americans make up 25 percent of the U.S. population, only 12 percent of students who graduate from the nation's medical schools are from these groups. In addition, only six percent of all practicing physicians are members of these minority groups.
The nation's medical schools and teaching hospitals have a decades-long commitment to building diversity in medicine. To complement efforts to increase the pipeline of prospective students, the AspiringDocs.org campaign takes a new approach—career marketing—to reach an untapped segment of potential minority student applicants in America's colleges and universities that was revealed by a new AAMC analysis.
This analysis, believed to be the first of its kind, found that while more minority students are graduating with biology degrees (the most common undergraduate major for medical school), the number of these students who applied to medical school has remained flat over the past decade. Between 1993 and 2004, biology majors, on average, represented over 55 percent of all medical school applicants. While gaps between the number of undergraduate biology majors and medical school applicants exist across all major racial and ethnic groups, they are especially large among African American, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American undergraduates, the three groups most underrepresented in medicine. Between 1993 and 2004:
"¢ The proportion of Black/African American biology majors who applied to medical school decreased from 83 percent to 44 percent;"¢ The proportion of Hispanic/Latino biology majors who applied to medical school dropped from 75 percent to 39 percent; and "¢ The proportion of Native American biology majors who applied to medical school decreased from 73 percent to 45 percent.
The AspiringDocs.org campaign, which is grounded in extensive opinion research with minority students, seeks to encourage well-prepared African American, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American college students from all undergraduate majors to pursue medicine as a career. The campaign has three main components:
"¢ a new free Web site, AspiringDocs.org,"¢ a series of advertisements to promote the Web site and raise awareness of the need to increase diversity in medicine, and"¢ pilot outreach activities at four undergraduate campuses with large numbers of minority biology majors, but fewer than expected medical school applicants.
The Web site is the campaign's centerpiece. Containing a comprehensive array of information from the AAMC and other resources about key topics that students identified in focus groups, the site also creates a new online community for aspiring doctors where they can ask questions and receive advice from the AAMC as well as other experts in the undergraduate and medical school community such as pre-health advisers, financial aid counselors, medical school students, and practicing physicians. A second feature allows students who register for the site to share their opinions and experiences with other students on a variety of "Hot Topics."
In addition to providing extensive online resources, the Web site is designed to inspire students with real-life stories of practicing minority physicians and medical students who overcame a variety of challenges and barriers on their road to medical school.
A series of advertisements featuring resident physicians, called "Meet the Doctor," has been developed to promote the Web site and address the more challenging barriers minority students believe they face when pursuing a medical education.
The AAMC is initially introducing the AspiringDocs.org campaign at four college campuses across the country. Two pilot programs at the University of Arizona and the University of Pittsburgh have already been launched in October and early November. The AAMC hopes to launch two more pilots, one at California State University at Fresno, and another at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, in the coming months.
The campaign will continue for the next two years. At the end of that period, the AAMC will use benchmark polls, Web tracking, and applicant data analyses to assess whether the campaign has inspired more students to consider medicine as a career and helped increase the number of minority students who apply to and enroll in medical school.
"We must change the face of medicine to reflect our nation's growing diversity," said AAMC President Darrell G. Kirch, M.D. "The AAMC hopes this new campaign will encourage more minority students to follow their dreams of becoming doctors so that we can improve access to quality care and ultimately eliminate health care disparities."
The Association of American Medical Colleges is a nonprofit association representing all 125 accredited U.S. and 17 accredited Canadian medical schools; nearly 400 major teaching hospitals and health systems, including 68 Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers; and 96 academic and scientific societies. Through these institutions and organizations, the AAMC represents 109,000 faculty members, 67,000 medical students, and 104,000 resident physicians. The AAMC also administers the MCAT exam and manages the application process for medical schools. Additional information about the AAMC and U.S. medical schools and teaching hospitals is available at http://www.aamc.org/newsroom.
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