Friday, Oct. 11, 2024
Do Hispanic women account for only 2% of all doctors in the US?
The percentage of Latina doctors in the U.S. has held at 2% for several years, even as Latinas accounted for 17% of all women here.
Nearly 19% of the U.S. population overall is Latino, and advocates for Hispanic health say the population of doctors who are Latinos is severely underrepresented. Just 6% of physicians are Latinos.
Research shows more Latino doctors would provide greater understanding of how cultural issues can affect health and they’re more likely to know Spanish. One study found Latina physicians are nearly 36 times more likely to speak Spanish than non-Hispanic white doctors.
Non-Hispanic white doctors make up 66% of all doctors. White men make up about 30% of the U.S. population.
Researchers say the shortage of Hispanic doctors has worsened over time, and medical school data shows some of the problem stems from the lack of Latino medical students.
This story was updated at 4:30 p.m., Oct. 17, 2024, to remove an erroneous statistic about Hispanic male doctors and to add that Latinos make up 6% of physicians in the U.S.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
- Latino Policy & Politics Institute Improvement Needed in Latina Physician Representation
- UC Irvine School of Social Sciences Latina physicians
- Office of Minority Health Hispanic/Latino Health
- Pew Research Half of Latinas Say Hispanic Women’s Situation Has Improved in the Past Decade and Expect More Gains
- Reflective Democracy Campaign Research and Analysis of the 2020 Primary Elections
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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.
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