A longitudinal analysis of minority career development programs in developing a viable health careers pipeline: Perspectives on policy and funding

Minority health professions enrichment programs (MHPEP) have improved the viability of the healthcare workforce in promoting health equity. Improving the number of graduating underrepresented minorities (URM) into the health professions has been noted a key strategy for eliminating health disparities. A historical review of policy and funding efforts concludes variation in strategies to address minority health issues. Reductions in governmental programs such as Title VII and anti-Affirmative Action in education perpetuated environmental chaos and inverted much of the progress made in graduating increased numbers of underrepresented minority health workers. Some of the most pervasive cases for change faced by the Obama administration in developing the health reform law included addressing the issue of health disparities from an access, cost and quality perspective while ensuring a plan to address sustainability of the health care workforce. Addressing the workforce concerns included providing strategies for the incumbent health care professional shortages and reviewing the rate at which change is impacting the rapidly growing ethnically diverse population. The University of Illinois at Chicago Urban Health Program (UIC UHP) is a MHPEP designed to support the recruitment, retention and graduation of URMs into the health professions and was put into action by the development of a legislative mandate organized in response to community protests over the lack of adequate health care services to the poor and underprivileged. To date UIC UHP has graduated more than 5000 URMs into the health professions. A ten-year longitudinal case analysis of the UIC UHP program performance outcomes and perspectives of URM providers identified the sustainable critical success factors that are proven to be deployable within traditional academic programs in support of strategic health equity methodologies and developing enhanced parity among patients and providers.