The proportion of black, Latino, and Native American faculty in U.S. academic medical centers has remained almost unchanged over the last 20 years. Some authors credit the "minority tax"—the burden of extra responsibilities placed on minority faculty in the name of diversity. This tax is in reality very complex, and a major source of inequity in academic medicine. The “minority tax” is better described as an Underrepresented Minority in Medicine (URMM) faculty responsibility disparity. This disparity is evident in many areas: diversity efforts, racism, isolation, mentorship, clinical responsibilities, and promotion. The authors examine the components of the URMM responsibility disparity and use information from the medical literature and from human resources to suggest practical steps that can be taken by academic leaders and policymakers to move toward establishing faculty equity and thus increase the numbers of black, Latino, and Native American faculty in academic medicine.

Ferdinand KC, Nasser SA. Racial/ethnic disparities in prevalence and care of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Curr Med Res Opin 2015;31:913–923 This article is a narrative review of the epidemiological data available on diabetes prevalence and care and of studies indexed in PubMed involving trials that evaluated treatments for type 2 diabetes in racial minority populations. The authors examined data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Table 1 provides a summary of demographic data (1–7). Because of the difficulties in gathering data for all three large racial and ethnic minorities in the United States, disparities are presented solely for African Americans compared to whites and for Hispanics compared to whites. The prevalence of diagnosed type 2 diabetes by racial/ethnic group is as follows: Asians 9.0%, African Americans 13.2%, Hispanic 12.8%, and non-Hispanic whites 7.6%. There is a wide variation in prevalance in the Native American population (e.g., 6.0% in Alaskan Natives and 24.1% in southern Arizona Native American groups) and among Hispanics (e.g., 8.5% in Central/South Americans, 9.3% in Cubans, 13.9% in Mexican Americans, and 14.8% in Puerto Ricans) (8). View this table: TABLE 1. Summary of Disparities Data Presented in the Article Reviewed (1–7) Objective. The purpose of this study was to identify and describe all clinical drug trials for type 2 diabetes that included Asians, African Americans, or Hispanics. Design. The authors conducted a literature review of studies indexed in MEDLINE and accessed through PubMed. Methods. The authors searched …

Increasing the number of physicians from underrepresented minority groups, including those who are African American or Black, has been an objective of many medical schools. Although an increase in representation has occurred, the number of African American medical faculty remains limited.¹ The shortage of African American faculty can have adverse consequences for the recruitment and retention of minority learners in medical schools. Many medical schools currently use holistic admissions processes, pipeline and outreach programs, and other initiatives to increase the number of students from underrepresented minority groups.^2,3 However, even with an increase in the number of schools that are addressing issues regarding poor and underserved communities, health disparities, and social factors associated with health,⁴ the increase in the number of African American students, especially male students, remains slow.⁵ Although the opening of additional medical schools may have created additional opportunities for students from minority groups to begin their medical educations, to our knowledge, none of the nearly 30 new medical schools that have opened since 2000 were located at historically Black colleges or universities.⁶ Coupled with the increasing number of graduate medical education programs and the ongoing initiatives to increase the number of African Americans attending predominantly White institutions, the creation of new medical schools at historically Black colleges and universities may help to increase the numbers of African American medical school graduates and have positive consequences for the physician workforce.

Objectives: Low numbers of underrepresented minority faculty members in academic medicine (black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American/Alaskan) continue to be a concern for medical schools because there is higher attrition and talent loss among this group. Although much has been written on this topic, there has not been a systematic review of the indexed literature...