Invited African-American Radiation Oncology Grand Rounds Speakers: DEI or Die?

Abstract

Invitations for grand rounds/visiting professor speakership are a sign of national expertise and are used to evaluate faculty promotion and advancement in Radiation Oncology. Consequently, evaluation of the demographics of faculty receiving such invitations may play a role in elucidating barriers to career advancement. We performed this study to assess the demographic racial and gender representation of invited Radiation Oncology speakerships, as well as the proportion of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)-related talks among invited African-American radiation oncology speakers. Radiation oncology programs in the United States were contacted by telephone and e-mail to obtain a list of speakers (grand rounds speakers and/or visiting professor) invited to their institution along with their speaking topics presented between January 2021 and December 2022. Speakers were categorized demographically by race and gender; speaker demographics were determined by a previously validated combination of facial recognition and internet investigation (PubMed.gov identification numbers 30996695 and 34919411). Speakers who were not faculty (i.e., residents, medical students) were eliminated from analysis. Talk topics were categorized as either DEI or non-DEI talks from the presence/absence of DEI-related content in the speaker's talk title. The Fisher's exact test was used for statistical analysis, with significance set at p < 0.05. A total of 252 invited speakers and their associated talk topics were obtained from 51 radiation oncology programs. Of these speakers, 98 were female (38.9%) and 16 were African-American race (6.3%). The invited talk topic was DEI-related in 7% of total cases. Among speakers not of African-American race, this was 4.2% (10/236); among African-American speakers, it was 50% (8/16). This difference reached statistical significance (p<0.0001). A significant proportion of invited African-American radiation oncology grand rounds/visiting professor talks are focused on the topic of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), compared with less than 5% of non-African-American invited speakers. Targeted efforts to expand African-American representation in non-DEI topics are needed to ensure and expand diversity in Radiation Oncology.