Longitudinal Racial and Ethnic Representation in US Dental Schools 2011-2022

Objectives: Equity, diversity, and inclusion within the dental workforce are critical imperatives for better access to and quality of care. We aimed to determine longitudinal representation by race/ethnicity among 1^st-year students and graduates in US dental schools between 2011-2022, investigating whether racial/ethnic representation of dental professionals correspond to the increasingly diverse US population.
Methods: Annual distribution of 1^st-year students and graduates by race/ethnicity among US dental schools were obtained from the publicly available Survey of Dental Education. Racial/ethnic representation was assessed using prevalence ratios (PR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) relative to general US population estimates from the American Community Survey (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs) for corresponding years.
Results: From 2011-12 to 2021-22, there were increases in % of 1^st-year students and graduates reporting non-Hispanic (NH)-Black and Hispanic/Latino race/ethnicities. However, these two groups remained severely underrepresented among 1^st-year students (NH-Black: PR=0.65, 95%CI 0.59,0.71; Hispanic/Latino: PR=0.59, 95%CI 0.55,0.64) and graduates (NH-Black: PR=0.47, 95%CI 0.43,0.53; Hispanic/Latino: PR=0.54, 95%CI 0.50,0.58). There were decreased representation among 1^st-year students for NH-American Indian or Alaska Native (e.g., 2021-22: PR=0.44, 95%CI 0.26,0.75) and NH-Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (e.g., 2021-22: PR=0.47, 95%CI 0.20,1.13) race/ethnicities. Conversely, there were slight increases in representation among graduates for NH-American Indian or Alaska Native (e.g., 2021-22: PR=0.96, 95%CI 0.68,1.37) and NH-Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (e.g., 2021-22: PR=1.11, 95%CI 0.63,1.95) race/ethnicities. NH-Asian and NH-White race/ethnicities were the highest represented and the most common throughout the whole study, respectively.
Conclusions: US dental schools have experienced slight improvements in racial/ethnic representation over the past decade. However, there is ongoing severe underrepresentation and indications of worsening representation in some groups. Initiatives to promote ongoing diversity efforts in the academic dental workforce remain critically needed to address the dental, oral, and craniofacial care needs of the diverse US population.