The American Medical Association voted to create "career pipeline" programs to attract more students from diverse backgrounds to the field of medicine.
It plans to publish a white paper to identify best practices for career pipeline programs and ways to track participants. Under its new policy, the AMA will craft a question to add to the Association of American Medical Colleges' electronic medical school application to identify if applicants participated in a pipeline program.
"Studies show that patients prefer receiving healthcare from and have better health outcomes when they can relate to, understand, and share similar backgrounds with their doctors. That's why the AMA is committed to efforts aimed at ensuring medical schools are building a diverse pipeline of physicians whose racial and ethnic backgrounds reflect the actual needs of patients," S. Bobby Mukkamala, MD, an AMA board member, said in a statement.
The policy builds on work the AMA has done through its consortium of 37 medical schools working to update medical education.
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