Longitudinal Racial and Ethnic Representation in US Dental Schools Between 2011 and 2023

Background

Diversity, inclusion, and representation within the dental care workforce are imperatives for equity in access to and quality of care. We determined longitudinal representation by race and ethnicity among first-year students and graduates in US dental schools from 2011–2012 to 2022–2023 and compared race and ethnicity representation between private and public schools from 2015–2016 to 2022–2023.

Methods

Racial and ethnic representation among first-year students and graduates in public and private US dental schools (obtained from the Survey of Dental Education) was assessed using prevalence ratios (PR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) relative to estimates of the US adult population (obtained from the American Community Survey) for corresponding years.

Results

Despite slight increases in representation over time for some groups, those identifying as Non-Hispanic (NH)-Black or African American and Hispanic or Latino remained severely underrepresented in 2022–2023 among first-year students (PR = 0.63, 95%CI 0.57–0.69; PR = 0.54, 95%CI 0.50–0.58, respectively) and graduates (PR = 0.48, 95%CI 0.43–0.53; PR = 0.58, 95%CI 0.54–0.62, respectively). There was fluctuation over time of representation of first-year students who identified as NH-American Indian or Alaska Native (PRs between 0.34 and 0.88) and NH-Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (PRs between 0.49 and 2.78). Private dental schools exhibited a somewhat greater representation of minoritized groups compared to public dental schools among first-year students, with similar patterns of persistent underrepresentation of some groups among both types of dental schools.

Conclusions

Slight improvements in racial/ethnic representation in dental school enrollment over the past decade for some groups have not been enough to close the gap of underrepresentation of racial and ethnically minoritized groups.