P3.O286: Characterizing Attendance at Faculty Development Sessions from a Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Perspective

Background: Academic medical centers are increasingly focused on decreasing health disparities through recruitment, retention, and advancement of underrepresented in medicine (UIM) trainees and faculty, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) education, and co-locating DEI initiatives in a health equity office. However, the impact of educational strategies on faculty DEI knowledge and skills remains unknown. At an academic children’s hospital, anecdotal observations suggested that faculty DEI sessions were mostly attended by UIM and junior female faculty. Thus, this study examined attendance at all faculty development (FD) and Grand Rounds (GR) sessions to 1) characterize which groups of faculty these sessions may reach and 2) compare demographics of faculty attending DEI sessions vs. non-DEI sessions.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective review of faculty attendance at FD and GR sessions from July 2019 to June 2022. Faculty demographics, including gender, race/ethnicity (collected as a single category at our institution), academic rank, and department, were obtained from our internal master faculty database. Racial and ethnic minorities were grouped as UIM (Black, Hispanic, Alaskan Native, American Indian, and Mixed Races); Asian was not included in the UIM group as ethnicity breakdown was not available. Sessions were classified as DEI-related based on keywords from our institution’s DEI mission statement in published session titles and objectives. We used logistic regression models to analyze the relationship between session type (DEI vs. non-DEI) and attendance. We examined interactions among demographic variables and session type. Sessions that faculty could not attend (i.e., pre-employment, post-termination) were excluded from analysis.

Results: Faculty demographics are summarized in Table 1. Overall, faculty were no more likely to attend DEI vs. non-DEI FD or GR sessions, Table 2. Within DEI FD sessions, attendance was more common among females vs. males (OR=2.60, CI 2.03-3.33), UIM vs. White (OR=2.48, CI 1.98-3.10), Professors vs. Assistant Professors (OR=3.32, CI 2.52-4.38). Within DEI GR sessions, attendance was more common among females vs. males (OR=1.15, CI 1.01-1.32) and UIM vs. White (OR=2.54, CI 2.19-2.95); there was no statistically significant difference among attendees by academic rank (p=0.28).

Conclusion: Our results suggest that some groups of faculty (female, UIM, and Professors) may be more likely to attend formal DEI education sessions compared to their counterparts (male, non-UIM, Associate and Assistant Professors), raising the possibility of DEI educational gaps among those less likely to attend. Further work is needed to explore why some faculty may be less likely to attend formal DEI education and alternative strategies to reach these groups.