Racial distribution of urology workforce in United States in comparison to general population

There is a growing body of evidence in health disparity research that racial concordance between patient and physician can contribute to patient’s trust, satisfaction, resource utilization, and decision-making participation. To compare the current racial/ethnic characteristics of practicing urologists to the U.S. population by American Urological Association (AUA) census geographic region. We compared urologist demographics from the 2014 AUA census to U.S. census data. Underrepresented in medicine (URM) status was defined as African-American (AA) or Hispanic race/ethnicity. Percent differences by AUA section were calculated by subtracting weighted frequencies of race/ethnicity for urologists from the general population. A negative percent difference denotes underrepresentation of urologists relative to the general population; positive percent difference denotes overrepresentation. URM urologists (n=728, 6.5%) were younger and more often female than non-URM counterparts. Overall, AA and Hispanic urologists were underrepresented in most sections while Caucasian and Asian urologists were overrepresented. AA urologists were most underrepresented in the East South-Central section (−34.4%). Hispanic urologists (−38%) were most underrepresented in the Pacific section (−38%). Overall, the percentage of URM urologists, compared to non-URM urologists, were highest in the South Atlantic [37.9% (276/728) vs. 19.2% (1,984/10,319), P<0.01] and West South-Central [15.9% (116/728) vs. 11.1% (1,143/10,319), P<0.01]. URM urologists tend to be younger with a higher proportion of female providers, indicating a shift in race and gender. URM urologists were most underrepresented in the East South-Central and Pacific sections.