How Latino health care may suffer after Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling
A study found Latinos are still underrepresented among certain health care professions and obstacles to advanced education may be to blame.
The study, published Wednesday in Health Affairs, comes a week after the recent Supreme Court decision to strike down affirmative action policies that helped diversify medical schools across the country for decades.
“While progress has been made, there is still a significant deficit in the number of Black and Latino doctors and medical students,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement last week. “This ruling will make it even more difficult for the nation’s colleges and universities to help create future health experts and workers that reflect the diversity of our great nation.”
Health experts worry the decision could exacerbate health disparities as emerging data shows patients of color experience better health outcomes with providers of similar backgrounds.
“In light of the Supreme Court decision, this sort of data adds context for why it’s so important to continue to find policies that create a diverse workforce,” Edward Salsberg, co-director of the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Latinos in health care
George Washington University researchers analyzed American Community Survey data from 2016 to 2020, looking at the four largest Latino populations in the U.S. health workforce, including Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans.
They found a concerning lack of diversity in the country’s health workforce. While Mexican Americans make up the largest Latino subpopulation and nearly 11% of the country’s workforce, they make up less than 2% of physicians.
In five of the eight professions included in the study that required advanced education, study authors found Mexican Americans represented less than one-quarter.
“When you get down to seeing the numbers – it’s surprising,” said Indira Islas, who conducted the study while a graduate student at the university's Milken Institute School of Public Health.
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Puerto Ricans and other Latinos were also underrepresented in these professions, but the study found Cuban Americans were overrepresented in advanced degree health professions like physicians and dentists.
Researchers discovered Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans and other Latinos are overrepresented in healthcare support occupations like medical or dental assistants or home health aides. The findings suggest Latinos are must be interested in pursuing medical careers but something is stopping them from advancing, Islas said.
“It’s very hard to work full time and try to apply for medical school and study for the MCAT,” she said. “They just decide to stay in these professions and it’s very unfortunate because they don’t get to see how they would do in these advanced professions.”
Diversity in higher education
In the study, researchers also analyzed data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and discovered there was a lack of diversity in higher education for advanced degrees.
“We found that among health professions, the greater the required years of education for entry, the lower the diversity index among Latinos,” study authors said.
Despite the lack of diversity, researchers noted improvement among Latinos who graduated in 2010 to 2012 compared to those who graduated in 2019 to 2021. Latino representation increased from nearly 7% to over 13% at the bachelor’s level, from nearly 5% to 10% at the master’s level, and from about 4% to 8% at the doctoral level.
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Salsberg, the study’s senior author, is worried the Supreme Court decision could impact impact as the educational requirements are “clearly” contributing to the lack of diversity in certain health care professions.
“Structural racism has made it more difficult for Latinos to advance. Those barriers are real,” he said. “We’re looking at how do we increase the diversity coming through the pipelines and pathways so that more Latinos can become physicians and other professionals requiring advanced practice and education.”
Health consequences
The data comes as previous research shows patients of color are more likely to experience better health outcomes in areas that have more diverse providers.
An April study found Black workforce representation was linked with higher life expectancy, and lower all-cause Black mortality and mortality rate disparities between Black and white people. Even a 10% increase in Black physician representation was associated with a higher life expectancy of more than 30 days.
Although data is limited, experts say this trend could also exist among Latinos partly due to cultural and language barriers. They worry the Supreme Court decision could make it harder for Latinos to enter higher education, decreasing diversity among health care providers and exacerbating health disparities.
“The importance of health practitioners who speak Spanish has a significant impact on health outcomes,” Salsberg said.
But the importance of cultural competence goes beyond language and last week's decision is likely to impact other minority communities, Islas said. There's a greater need to find other avenues of increasing diversity in higher education.
“It’s become a battle for all of us now and we need to help each other,” Islas said.
Follow Adrianna Rodriguez on Twitter: @AdriannaUSAT.
Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court affirmative action ruling detrimental to Latinos' health
