No Confidence Diversity Letter Rocks AAOS

Time to Act

This failure comes at a time when, “creating safe and equitable learning and work environments for underrepresented minorities and women is absolutely critical…events in this country have highlighted the syndemic nature of race, discrimination and health inequity.”

The group demands the following:

Governance

• An examination of and commitment to change AAOS policies and bylaws in order to create a mechanism to ensure inclusion of members from underrepresented in medicine demographics at the levels of the Board of Directors, Board of Councilors/Specialties and AAOS Committees
• Mandatory Unconscious Bias training as a prerequisite for nomination by the Nominating Committee for ABOS Membership. This may include a recurring web based longitudinal assessment (WLA) with a list of articles, books, and book chapters generated yearly
• Assessment and Accountability – Urgent evaluation by a credible independent third party, regarding current and planned diversity and inclusion efforts by the AAOS
• A public dashboard to reflect the current state and future progress of achieving diversity targets, methods and instruments to measure its progress across its operations, membership, income equity, training and development, culture to include
• Establishing a Chief DEI Office and Officer who reports directly to the CEO and BOD of AAOS with line item resources fully controlled by the CDO to be allocated/reallocated for administrative support including access to professional statistical analysis
• Racial Justice and Equity Committee established to address institutionalized racism and resulting healthcare disparities in musculoskeletal care and research

Education of AAOS Members

• Funding allocated/reallocated for data collection and publication of the annual demographics of orthopaedic residency and fellowship training programs, faculty, program directors and chairs. Line item funding for data collection, statistical analysis, and continuous publication of data focused on current musculoskeletal health and treatment disparities affecting underrepresented minorities and women.
• A measurable commitment to developing the pipeline of orthopaedic surgeons from underrepresented demographic groups at all levels of education
• Strategic, long-term partnerships with budgeted, sufficient, dedicated resource allocation for the expansion of pipeline programs, especially those with demonstrated success at the GME, UME and K-12 levels.
• Faculty Development and Training Requirements of the AAOS Committee on Education
• Establish mandatory minimum of CME requirements on issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and systemic racism
• Mandatory leadership training at the program levels for chairs, program directors and program coordinators
• Inclusion of non-biased standardized test questions for the Orthopaedic In-training Examination reflective of issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and disparities
• A reporting system reflecting the ability of all US orthopedic surgery training programs to establish and maintain a safe environment designed to facilitate racial, ethnic, gender, socioeconomic, and sexual orientation diversity
• Line item resources to be allocated/reallocated for administrative support including access to professional statistical analysis.