Increasing workforce diversity : Using social marketing to engage minority youth

The U.S. faces challenging racial and ethnic health disparities. While many efforts to reduce disparities focus on individual behavior change and community system change, an additional focus can be changing the composition of the public health workforce itself. In medicine, research has demonstrated that minority patients tend to be more satisfied with medical care received from physicians that are of the same race or ethnicity. While similar evidence for the public health workforce is not available, a variety of reports, researchers and federal agencies also recommend increasing the diversity of the health workforce for a variety of reasons, including addressing disparities. As the racial and ethnic composition of our nation evolves, the public health workforce must keep pace. In many jurisdictions, the numbers of those employed in public health do not mirror those population demographics. Given that current gap, and the fact that Hispanic and African American populations are generally younger than the majority population at a time when the public health workforce is aging and retiring, we are met with an opportunity to change the face of public health. At the same time, just as the racial and ethnic composition of the population is changing, so must the strategies used to engage individuals in the field of public health. This session will share preliminary information on how a community-academic partnership and a cross-sector advisory committee will use a social marketing approach to identify minority youth barriers to starting public health careers.(239) Measure: Ongoing process and impact evaluations of the social marketing efforts This multi-sectorial initiative focuses on the importance of collaborative efforts to address health inequities.