It's Who We Are

The University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center—through its four health colleges—has a number of programs in place to create a more diverse, inclusive and culturally competent health care workforce for the betterment of our community.

It's Part of a Bigger Plan

In 2013, the university formalized three goals of the UC2019 Mission-Based Health Care operational principles that form the framework for the UC’s Academic Master Plan (PDF).

• The University of Cincinnati will work in collaboration with community stakeholders to develop a health workforce that increases access to health care and the opportunity for optimal health for all in the local urban community.
• The University of Cincinnati will produce students who are culturally competent to ensure the local health care workforce have the background, qualities, and skills to serve community needs and decrease health disparities in the local urban community.
• The University of Cincinnati will increase the educational opportunity for talented and diverse students to be recruited in order to graduate a health care workforce that reflects the diversity of the population in the local urban community.
   

It's Needed

The work we’re doing isn’t just the right thing to do. Research tells us it’s important for the health of the people we serve.

• A 2002 Institute of Medicine report titled "Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care,” documented the direct link between a shortage of underrepresented health care providers and poorer health outcomes for diverse patients.
• Subsequent studies have shown that patients prefer to see health care providers of similar race and ethnicity to themselves.
• A research letter in the February 2014 edition of Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Internal Medicine spoke of the merits of increasing minority representation in medicine and highlighted that, despite decades of efforts, we've still not achieved adequate representation of minority physicians who play such a critical role in serving the health care needs of patients in communities where care is often most needed.

Work Underway

• UC is a member of Urban Universities for HEALTH (UU HEALTH), a national academic learning collaborative focused on investigating approaches to health care workforce development that lead to improved health outcomes and reduced disparities in local communities.
• In 2014, working through UU HEALTH, the university developed questions for the Greater Cincinnati Community Health Status Survey (CHSS). Results, released in June 2014, found that insurance coverage, race and ethnicity were barriers to finding trusted health care providers.
• In July 2014, the university released results of a first-of-its-kind comprehensive regional health care workforce profile (PDF). Commissioned by the UC Academic Health Center and completed by HealthLandscape LLC, the profile shows that there are gaps in available data, and exhibits the need for better data collection mechanisms in order to get a clear picture of the diversity and number of health care providers in our region.

In the news

UC College of Nursing recognized for gender-related diversity efforts
UC’s College of Nursing is one of only 12 nationwide just honored for efforts to recruit and retain men in nursing. This latest recognition for the college caps the recent national announcement in which the college received the prestigious INSIGHT Into Diversity Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity award for its extensive recruitment efforts to increase the number of underrepresented and first-generation nursing students. Also receiving that award were the College of Allied Health Sciences and the James L. Winkle College of Pharmacy.

Inclusive excellence drives UC’s strategic plan, Next Lives Here, bridging each platform and pathway to the others.

UC med students mentor CPS kids
WLWT-TV, Channel 5—April 2, 2019
Segment mentions the Med Mentors program at the UC College of Medicine and features comments from second-year medical student Rob Toy.