Enhancing the Pipeline for a Diverse Workforce.

The lack of diversity in the physician workforce is a multifactorial problem. From elementary school through college, students from minority or socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds achieve despite attending underresourced schools, facing low expectations from peers and teachers, and overcoming unconscious biases among decision makers. These and other obstacles lead to significant attrition of talent by the time cohorts prepare to apply to medical school. Pipeline initiatives that inspire and prepare applicants from groups underrepresented in medicine are needed to swell the ranks of diverse individuals entering our profession.

Lifetime healthcare expenses across demographic and cardiovascular risk groups: The application of a novel modeling strategy in a large multiethnic cohort study.

Objective: To understand the burden of healthcare expenses over the lifetime of individuals and evaluate differences among those with cardiovascular risk factors and among disadvantaged groups based on race/ethnicity and sex. Methods: We linked data from the longitudinal multiethnic Dallas Heart Study, which recruited participants between 2000 and 2002, with inpatient and outpatient claims from all hospitals in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex through December 2018, capturing encounter expenses. Race/ethnicity and sex, as well as five risk factors, hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, smoking, and overweight/obesity, were defined at cohort enrollment. For each individual, expenses were indexed to age and cumulated between 40 and 80 years of age. Lifetime expenses across exposures were evaluated as interactions in generalized additive models. Results: A total of 2184 individuals (mean age, 45±10 years; 61% women, 53% Black) were followed between 2000 and 2018. The mean modeled lifetime cumulative healthcare expenses were $442,629 (IQR, $423,850 to $461,408). In models that included 5 risk factors, Black individuals had $21,306 higher lifetime healthcare spending compared with non-Black individuals (P < .001), and men had modestly higher expenses than women ($5987, P < .001). Across demographic groups, the presence of risk factors was associated with progressively higher lifetime expenses, with significant independent association of diabetes ($28,075, P < .001), overweight/obesity ($8816, P < .001), smoking ($3980, P = .009), and hypertension ($528, P = .02) with excess spending. Conclusion: Our study suggests Black individuals have higher lifetime healthcare expenses, exaggerated by the substantially higher prevalence of risk factors, with differences emerging in older age.

Historical Redlining, Socioeconomic Distress, and Risk of Heart Failure Among Medicare Beneficiaries.

BACKGROUND: The association of historical redlining policies, a marker of structural racism, with contemporary heart failure (HF) risk among White and Black individuals is not well established. METHODS: We aimed to evaluate the association of redlining with the risk of HF among White and Black Medicare beneficiaries. Zip code-level redlining was determined by the proportion of historically redlined areas using the Mapping Inequality Project within each zip code. The association between higher zip code redlining proportion (quartile 4 versus quartiles 1-3) and HF risk were assessed separately among White and Black Medicare beneficiaries using generalized linear mixed models adjusted for potential confounders, including measures of the zip code-level Social Deprivation Index. RESULTS: A total of 2 388 955 Medicare beneficiaries (Black n=801 452; White n=1 587 503; mean age, 71 years; men, 44.6%) were included. Among Black beneficiaries, living in zip codes with higher redlining proportion (quartile 4 versus quartiles 1-3) was associated with increased risk of HF after adjusting for age, sex, and comorbidities (risk ratio, 1.08 [95% CI, 1.04-1.12]; P<0.001). This association remained significant after further adjustment for area-level Social Deprivation Index (risk ratio, 1.04 [95% CI, 1.002-1.08]; P=0.04). A significant interaction was observed between redlining proportion and Social Deprivation Index (Pinteraction<0.01) such that higher redlining proportion was significantly associated with HF risk only among socioeconomically distressed regions (above the median Social Deprivation Index). Among White beneficiaries, redlining was associated with a lower risk of HF after adjustment for age, sex, and comorbidities (risk ratio, 0.94 [95% CI, 0.89-0.99]; P=0.02). CONCLUSIONS: Historical redlining is associated with an increased risk of HF among Black patients. Contemporary zip code-level social determinants of health modify the relationship between redlining and HF risk, with the strongest relationship between redlining and HF observed in the most socioeconomically disadvantaged communities.

Increasing the Representation of Black Men in Medicine by Addressing Systems Factors.

In 2015, data released by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) showed that there were more Black men applying and matriculating to medical school in 1978 than 2014. The representation of Black men in medicine is a troubling workforce issue that was identified by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine as a national crisis. While premedical pathway programs have contributed to increased workforce diversity, alone they are insufficient to accelerate change. In response, the AAMC and the National Medical Association launched a new initiative in August 2020, the Action Collaborative for Black Men in Medicine, to address the systems factors that influence the trajectory to medicine for Black men. The authors provide a brief overview of the educational experiences of Black boys and men in the United States and, as members of the Action Collaborative, describe their early work. Using research, data, and collective lived experiences, the Action Collaborative members identified premedical and academic medicine systems factors that represented opportunities for change. The premedical factors include financing and funding, information access, pre-health advisors, the Medical College Admission Test, support systems, foundational academics, and alternative career paths. The academic medicine factors include early identification, medical school recruitment and admissions, and leadership accountability. The authors offer several points of intervention along the medical education continuum, starting as early as elementary school through medical school matriculation, for institutional leaders to address these factors as part of their diversity strategy. The authors also present the Action Collaborative's process for leveraging collective impact to build an equity-minded action agenda focused on Black men. They describe their initial focus on pre-health advising and leadership accountability and next steps to develop an action agenda. Collective impact and coalition building will facilitate active, broad engagement of partners across sectors to advance long-term systems change.

Enhancing the Pipeline for a Diverse Workforce.

The lack of diversity in the physician workforce is a multifactorial problem. From elementary school through college, students from minority or socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds achieve despite attending underresourced schools, facing low expectations from peers and teachers, and overcoming unconscious biases among decision makers. These and other obstacles lead to significant attrition of talent by the time cohorts prepare to apply to medical school. Pipeline initiatives that inspire and prepare applicants from groups underrepresented in medicine are needed to swell the ranks of diverse individuals entering our profession.

Engaging Families in Adult Cardiovascular Care: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association.

Family engagement empowers family members to become active partners in care delivery. Family members increasingly expect and wish to participate in care and be involved in the decision-making process. The goal of engaging families in care is to improve the care experience to achieve better outcomes for both patients and family members. There is emerging evidence that engaging family members in care improves person- and family-important outcomes. Engaging families in adult cardiovascular care involves a paradigm shift in the current organization and delivery of both acute and chronic cardiac care. Many cardiovascular health care professionals have limited awareness of the role and potential benefits of family engagement in care. Additionally, many fail to identify opportunities to engage family members. There is currently little guidance on family engagement in any aspect of cardiovascular care. The objective of this statement is to inform health care professionals and stakeholders about the importance of family engagement in cardiovascular care. This scientific statement will describe the rationale for engaging families in adult cardiovascular care, outline opportunities and challenges, highlight knowledge gaps, and provide suggestions to cardiovascular clinicians on how to integrate family members into the health care team.

Black lives matter in the cath lab, too! A proposal for the interventional cardiology community to counteract bias and racism.

Structural racism in the United States underlies racial disparities in the criminal justice system, in the healthcare system generally, and with regards to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the year 2020, these inequities combined and magnified to such a degree that it left Black Americans and physicians caring for them questioning how much Black lives matter. Academic medical centers and the major cardiology organizations responded to a global call to end racism with bold statements and initiatives. Interventional cardiologists utilize advanced equipment to mechanically treat a wide spectrum of heart problems, yet this technology has not been applied in an equitable manner. Interventional therapies are often underutilized in Blacks, exacerbating healthcare disparities and contributing to the excess cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in these communities. Racial bias, whether intentional, unconscious, systemic, or at the individual level, plays a role in these disparities. Many in the interventional cardiology community aspire to take intentional steps to reduce the impact of bias and racism in our specialty. We discuss several proposals here and provide a "report card" for interventional programs to perform a self-assessment.

Diversity in modern heart failure trials: Where are we, and where are we going.

Over the last three decades, increased attention has been given to the representation of historically underrepresented groups within the landscape of pivotal clinical trials. However, recent events (i.e., coronavirus pandemic) have laid bare the potential continuation of historic inequities in available clinical trials and studies aimed at the care of broad patient populations. Anecdotally, cardiovascular disease (CVD) has not been immune to these disparities. Within this review, we examine and discuss recent landmark CVD trials, with a specific focus on the representation of Blacks within several critically foundational heart failure clinical trials tied to contemporary treatment strategies and drug approvals. We also discuss solutions for inequities within the landscape of cardiovascular trials. Building a more diverse clinical trial workforce coupled with intentional efforts to increase clinical trial diversity will advance equity in cardiovascular care.

Association of Socioeconomic Status With Ideal Cardiovascular Health in Black Men.

Background Black men are burdened by high cardiovascular risk and the highest all-cause mortality rate in the United States. Socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with improved cardiovascular risk factors in majority populations, but there is a paucity of data in Black men. Methods and Results We examined the association of SES measures including educational attainment, annual income, employment status, and health insurance status with an ideal cardiovascular health (ICH) score, which included blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol, body mass index, physical activity, and smoking in African American Male Wellness Walks. Six metrics of ICH were categorized into a 3-tiered ICH score 0 to 2, 3 to 4, and 5 to 6. Multinomial logistic regression modeling was performed to examine the association of SES measures with ICH scores adjusted for age. Among 1444 men, 7% attained 5 to 6 ICH metrics. Annual income <$20 000 was associated with a 56% lower odds of attaining 3 to 4 versus 0 to 2 ICH components compared with ≥$75 000 (P=0.016). Medicare and no insurance were associated with a 39% and 35% lower odds of 3 to 4 versus 0 to 2 ICH components, respectively, compared with private insurance (all P<0.05). Education and employment status were not associated with higher attainment of ICH in Black men. Conclusions Among community-dwelling Black men, higher attainment of measures of SES showed mixed associations with greater attainment of ICH. The lack of association of higher levels of educational attainment and employment status with ICH suggests that in order to address the long-standing health inequities that affect Black men, strategies to increase attainment of cardiovascular health may need to address additional components beyond SES.

Racism and Cardiology: A Global Call to Action.

Racism and racial bias influence the lives and cardiovascular health of minority individuals. The fact that minority groups tend to have a higher burden of cardiovascular disease risk factors is often a result of racist policies that restrict opportunities to live in healthy neighbourhoods and have access to high-quality education and healthcare. The fact that minorities tend to have the worst outcomes when cardiovascular disease develops is often a result of institutional or individual racial bias encountered when they interact with the healthcare system. In this review, we discuss bias, discrimination, and structural racism from the viewpoints of cardiologists in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the US, and how racial bias impacts cardiovascular care. Finally, we discuss proposals to mitigate the impact of racism in our specialty.

Le racisme et la discrimination raciale influent sur la vie et la santé cardiovasculaire des membres des minorités. Le fait que les groupes minoritaires tendent à présenter plus de facteurs de risque de maladies cardiovasculaires est souvent le résultat de politiques racistes qui restreignent les possibilités de vivre dans des quartiers sains et d'avoir accès à une éducation et à des soins de santé de grande qualité. Le fait que les minorités tendent à afficher les pires résultats lorsqu'une maladie cardiovasculaire se manifeste est souvent le résultat d'une discrimination raciale systémique ou individuelle à l'œuvre dans leurs interactions avec le système de santé. Dans le présent article, nous traitons de la discrimination et du racisme structurel du point de vue de cardiologues du Canada, du Royaume-Uni et des États-Unis. Nous abordons également l'incidence de la discrimination raciale sur les soins cardiovasculaires. Enfin, nous proposons certaines mesures visant à atténuer l'effet du racisme dans notre spécialité.

Disparities in Asthma and Allergy Care: What Can We Do?

The coronavirus disease pandemic and the growing movements for social and racial equality have increased awareness of disparities in American health care that exist on every level. Social determinants of health, structural racism, and implicit bias play major roles in preventing health equity. We begin with the larger picture and then focus on examples of systemic and health inequities and their solutions that have special relevance to allergy-immunology. We propose a 4-prong approach to address inequities that requires (1) racial and ethnic inclusivity in research with respect to both participants and investigators, (2) diversity in all aspects of training and practice, (3) improvement in communication between clinicians and patients, and (4) awareness of the social determinants of health. By communication we mean sensitivity to the role of language, cultural background, and health beliefs in physician-patient interactions and provision of training and equipment so that the use of telecommunication can be a resource for all patients. The social determinants of health are the social factors that affect health and the success of health care, such as adequacy of housing and access to nutritious foods. Using this 4-prong approach we can overcome health disparities.

Bias and Racism Teaching Rounds at an Academic Medical Center.

Racism and events of racial violence have dominated the US news in 2020 almost as much as the novel coronavirus pandemic. The resultant civil unrest and demands for racial justice have spawned a global call for change. As a subset of a society that struggles with racism and other explicit biases, it is inescapable that some physicians and health-care employees will have the same explicit biases as the general population. Patients who receive care at academic medical centers interact with multiple individuals, some of whom may have explicit and implicit biases that influence patient care. In fact, multiple reports have documented that some physicians, health-care workers, and health professional students have negative biases based on race, ethnicity, obesity, religion, and sexual identity, among others. These biases can influence decision-making and aggravate health-care disparities and patient-physician mistrust. We review four actual cases from academic medical centers that illustrate how well-intended physicians and health-care workers can be influenced by bias and how this can put patients at risk. Strategies to mitigate bias are discussed and recommended. We introduce what we believe can be a powerful teaching tool: periodic "bias and racism rounds" in teaching hospitals, in which real patient interactions are reviewed critically to identify opportunities to reduce bias and racism and to attenuate the impact of bias and racism on patient outcomes.

Perceptions on Diversity in Cardiology: A Survey of Cardiology Fellowship Training Program Directors.

Background The lack of diversity in the cardiovascular physician workforce is thought to be an important driver of racial and sex disparities in cardiac care. Cardiology fellowship program directors play a critical role in shaping the cardiology workforce. Methods and Results To assess program directors' perceptions about diversity and barriers to enhancing diversity, the authors conducted a survey of 513 fellowship program directors or associate directors from 193 unique adult cardiology fellowship training programs. The response rate was 21% of all individuals (110/513) representing 57% of US general adult cardiology training programs (110/193). While 69% of respondents endorsed the belief that diversity is a driver of excellence in health care, only 26% could quote 1 to 2 references to support this statement. Sixty-three percent of respondents agreed that "our program is diverse already so diversity does not need to be increased." Only 6% of respondents listed diversity as a top 3 priority when creating the cardiovascular fellowship rank list. Conclusions These findings suggest that while program directors generally believe that diversity enhances quality, they are less familiar with the literature that supports that contention and they may not share a unified definition of "diversity." This may result in diversity enhancement having a low priority. The authors propose several strategies to engage fellowship training program directors in efforts to diversify cardiology fellowship training programs.