Trending diversity: Reviewing four-decades of graduating fellows and the current leadership in pediatric surgery.

Abstract Purpose Diversity in the physician workforce remains a priority in healthcare as it has been shown to improve outcomes. Decisions for choosing specific fields in medicine are partly influenced by mentors, which tend to be the same sex or ethnicity. Females are starting to outnumber males in medical school and minorities are targeted for recruitment. We hypothesized that diversity in pediatric surgery has increased over time. Methods The recently published A Genealogy of North American Pediatric Surgery was utilized to identify graduating pediatric surgery fellows from 1981-2018. Organization websites were used to identify past and current leaders. A web-based analysis, including online facial recognition software, was performed. A year-to-year and decade-to-decade demographic comparison was completed. Results 1,217 pediatric surgery fellows graduated between 1981-2018. When comparing graduates from the first and last decades, an increase from 16.9% to 39.5% for female graduates was observed (p = 0.046). A significant increase in non-White graduates was seen for all races (p Conclusion There was a significant increase in diversity in pediatric surgery fellowship graduates. There were increasing trends in female graduates and all non-White racial groups. Focusing on enhancing the pipeline and mentoring underrepresented minorities will continue to enhance this trend for the field of pediatric surgery. Level of Evidence III; Retrospective Review