Racial and Gender Composition of Health Education Faculty in Higher Education

Abstract

For the past two decades, public institutions and those that contract with the United States Government have established policies and procedures concerned with affirmative action and equal employment opportunity. These new regulations arise from Executive Order 11246 (1965, amended 1967), which prohibits employment discrimination as a condition of conducting business with the government. In higher education, principles of affirmative action and equal employment opportunity have been adopted widely (Tucker, 1984). However, not all searches for faculty in health education have been able to create applicant pools that include qualified minorities and women. To conduct realistic searches that not only comply with affirmative action and equal opportunity regulations but also increase representation of women and minorities on health education faculty, it is necessary to develop a baseline of current representation and availability. This study was conducted to establish a data base