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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Sep 30.
Published in final edited form as: Acad Med. 2013 Mar;88(3):405–412. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0b013e318280d9f9

Checklist for Association of Professors of Medicine (APM) Best Practices for Enhancing Faculty Diversity*.

Respondents answer yes or no to the following questions:
Medical student recruitment

  • Does your medical school work with local high schools and/or colleges to maximize recruitment and retention of high-potential students? If no, is your department working to create such linkages?

  • Does your medical school have a preentry program (i.e., medical education development program)? If no, is your department working with the medical school to create such a program?

  • Has your department worked to increase underrepresented minority (URM) representation on the medical school admissions committees?

  • Does your medical school admissions committee train all members to play a vital role in URM recruitment (i.e., awareness of character qualities [compassion, altruism, respect, integrity] in the admissions selection process)? If not, has your department discussed these issues with the director of the admissions committee?

Transition to residency

  • Does your residency recruitment committee have URM faculty members?

  • Does the department train the recruitment committee to play a vital role in URM recruitment?

  • Does your department ask URM faculty to review (and potentially reverse) each offer to refuse an interview to an URM candidate?

  • Has your department appointed a committee member to separately review URM applications and advocate for them at final committee meetings?

  • Has your department begun a dialogue between URM residents and department leadership regarding how “URM-friendly” the program is?

  • Does your department send representatives to national meetings of minority students (e.g., Student National Medical Association, Latino Medical Student Association)?

  • Has your department created (and widely advertised) elective rotations for URM medical students?

  • Do URM residents call each URM candidate to help establish personal contact, dispel misperceptions, and offer personal advice?

  • Are there opportunities for URM residents to meet as a group and discuss the program?

Transition to fellowship

  • Does your department require section/division chiefs and fellowship directors to prominently mention the department's increasing commitment to URM representation?

  • Does your department link legitimate diversity enhancement efforts to annual evaluations/financial incentives within the sections?

  • Does your department require program directors and search committees to examine (at least annually) the fairness of the selection process and results in achieving diversity?

  • Is information about funding opportunities available to URM fellows (and junior faculty) widely disseminated?

  • Does your department sponsor an annual social affair with key URM and non-URM faculty, department leaders, and URM residents/fellows?

  • Does your department use visiting professorships to showcase research accomplishments of nationally known URM physician-scientists?

Transition to junior faculty

  • Does your department train faculty (URM and non-URM) to become better mentors to junior URM faculty?

  • Does your department offer additional training on grant writing for junior URM faculty?

  • Is your departmental leadership familiar with NIH/other funding opportunities to assist with URM faculty development?

Transition to senior faculty

  • Does your department have a standing committee on URM faculty (a “diversity committee”) or participate in medical-school-based committees?

  • Does your department remind division/section chiefs of need to identify/recruit outstanding junior/senior URM faculty before a faculty search begins?

  • Does your department attempt to enhance search committee effectiveness in attracting URM candidates (i.e., assessing the process of how qualifications are defined/evaluated)?

  • Does your department maintain channels of communication between leadership and URM faculty?

  • Does your department regularly benchmark URM representation against averages published by the Association of American Medical Colleges?

  • Does your department collect equity data and survey faculty morale annually? If yes, is this information included in a disseminated report?

  • Does your department annually review salary/resource distribution for URM/gender equity?

  • Does your department seek URMs for influential department positions (division/section chiefs, key committee chairs)?

  • Does your department replace administrators who knowingly discriminate?

  • Does your department end inequitable treatment of URM faculty and make appropriate corrections for inequities?

  • Does the departmental leadership watch for and prevent the isolation/gradual marginalization of URM faculty?

  • Does the department identify institutional practices that might favor white, male faculty over URM and/or women faculty (i.e., defining academic success as unrestricted availability to work)?

*

Developed by the APM in 2005 for enhancing racial and ethnic diversity within academic departments of medicine and used in this study as the basis for a survey to determine the URM rank of U.S. medical schools in 2009.