title: Academic ranks and medical schools of underrepresented minority faculty in family medicine departments.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To examine academic rankings and educational backgrounds of underrepresented minority (URM) family medicine faculty and compare their academic ranks with national trends. The authors also determined the extent to which international and historically black educational institutions contributed URM faculty to family medicine.
  
  
  METHODS
  In 1999 questionnaires were sent to 129 family medicine departments asking for academic ranks and educational institutions attended by their URM faculty. Comparisons were made between URM faculty's academic ranks and all family medicine faculty, medical school minority faculty, and medical school faculty.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A total of 80% of URM faculty were assistant professors or instructors, and 4.4% were professors. URM family medicine faculty had significantly lower rankings compared with medical school minority faculty and all family medicine faculty. URM family medicine faculty at historically black medical schools were more likely to have received their degrees from historically black undergraduate institutions and medical schools than were URM family medicine faculty at non-historically-black medical schools.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  URM family medicine faculty appear to experience a double disadvantage: being minority and working for family medicine departments. Their academic ranks remain far below those of both minority medical school faculty and family medicine faculty, a discouraging finding considering the current shortage of URM faculty in family medicine departments. Historically black medical schools cannot address the shortage alone, so non-historically-black medical schools need to both recruit URM faculty and follow up with appropriate mentoring of those faculty.
authors.affiliation: Department of Family and Community Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee 53226-0509, USA.
authors.forename: Anne M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Marbella
authors.forename: Richard L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Holloway
authors.forename: Roger
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sherwood
authors.forename: Peter M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Layde
mesh_terms: D005180:Faculty, Medical / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005194:Family Practice / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D008913:Minority Groups / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012577:Schools, Medical / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014481:United States