Promoting a Diverse and Inclusive Workforce Requires Having a Seat at the Leadership Table

Being in academic medicine has made pathologist and women’s health advocate Vivian Pinn, MD, aware of how important it is to be in a leadership position in the healthcare field.   

“If you are in leadership, it is important that you recruit people of diverse backgrounds for them to see that there is a role for them in laboratory administration, research, and in the community,” said Dr. Pinn, who was the keynote speaker during the Scientific General Session at the ASCP 2021 Annual Meeting in late October. The session focused on fostering a diverse and inclusive workforce in health care.  

Dr Pinn, who is Black and grew up in the segregated South, has had many “firsts” in her nearly 60-year career. She was the only woman and the only person of color in her medical school class at the University of Virginia. Later, she was the first Black woman to chair an academic pathology department in the U.S.

“Being in academic medicine brought to me a realization. If you really want to increase diversity in pathology, it is extremely important that you provide opportunities to young men and women of diverse backgrounds early on, to give them exposure to different aspects of health care. I have tried to do the same,” she said. “Some believe that if you are a minority in the medical field, you should go back into your (minority) community to practice. But that isn’t necessarily so. Our communities are wherever medicine is being practiced – in laboratory administration, research, and in the community.”

“After 25 years in pathology, I had the opportunity to go to the National Institutes of Health to head a new office,” she said. “When you are a leader in academic medicine, you have the opportunity to think about who will follow you, the opportunity to appoint individuals to serve on search committees to recruit candidates, or to serve on committees that determine which projects will receive funding.”

Today, much progress has been made, she said, noting that women now comprise about half the students in medical school. However, less than 20 percent of them go on to become department chairs or deans. And, only about 13 percent of women of color or from under-represented ethnic groups hold those leadership positions, according to Dr. Pinn.

She praised ASCP for shining a spotlight on this issue during the Annual Meeting and in its initiatives throughout the year. For several years, ASCP has worked with its membership to a foster diverse, equitable and inclusive in the pathology and laboratory medicine professions. 

Having a diverse and equitable workforce is critical in order to better serve the communities, ASCP’s Immediate Past President Kimberly Sanford, MD, MASCP, MT(ASCP), said at the start of the Scientific General Session. 

“This year, ASCP launched awareness campaigns around black voices, women leaders, Asian-American and Pacific Islanders, LGBTQ, Latinx, and Indigenous communities in pathology and laboratory medicine,” Dr. Sanford said. “In early 2021, ASCP developed an initiative to (create) a red blood cell antigen genotype database to meet the needs of patients who have difficult cross-matches and require frequent transfusions, particularly those (patients) with sickle cell anemia.” 

ASCP also helped launch the Society of Black Pathologists, which is working to increase the number of black and under-represented minorities in pathology and laboratory medicine and address barriers to inclusion in the profession.

The Society of Black Pathologists, or SBP, co-hosted the Scientific General Session and its leaders took part in a panel discussion immediately following Dr. Pinn’s presentation.  Panelist Carla L. Ellis, MD, MS, FASCP, who is president of the SBP and an associate professor of pathology at Northwestern University, acknowledged that women and people of color still experience barriers ascending the ranks to leadership positions in health care. She urged those in the audience who face such barriers to “remember your power and all the hard work you have done to get to where you are. Insist that your voice be heard.”