Journal Article Annotations
2024, 1st Quarter

Education

Annotations by Jai Gandhi, MD
April, 2024

Annual Meeting Content Analysis: Leveraging Annual Meetings to Promote Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging in the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry.

PUBLICATION #1 — Education

Annual Meeting Content Analysis: Leveraging Annual Meetings to Promote Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging in the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry.

Hermioni L Amonoo, Abhisek C Khandai, Annabella C Boardman, Carrie L Ernst, Carlos Fernandez-Robles, Laura Suarez, Mark V Bradley, Anique K Forrester, Ciara Dale, Kewchang Lee, Rubiahna Vaughn, Leena P Mittal

Abstract: J Acad Consult Liaison Psychiatry. 2024 Feb 22:S2667-2960(24)00023-5. doi: 10.1016/j.jaclp.2024.02.003. Online ahead of print.

Background:
There is an increasing need to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in all aspects of academic medicine, including through continuing medical education. Although professional medical organizations’ annual meetings play an instrumental role in continuing medical education for physicians, there are no studies describing DEI content in the annual meeting programming of professional medical organizations, including the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (ACLP), the primary professional organization for consultation-liaison psychiatrists.

Objective:
To examine the ACLP annual meeting titles using Content Analysis.

Methods:
We examined the publicly available ACLP annual meeting content titles on the ACLP website from 2010 to 2021. National DEI leaders from ACLP’s DEI subcommittee iteratively generated keywords that covered a broad scope of DEI-related themes. Each annual meeting’s content was independently coded by 2 members of the DEI subcommittee with discrepancies adjudicated by 2 additional members. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize the content of the annual meeting.

Results:
Of the 2615 annual meeting titles from 2010 to 2021 that were analyzed, 2531 were not coded to have DEI themes. Three percent (n = 84) of titles were coded to have a DEI theme as follows: Culture/diversity (n = 20, 24%), bias/disparities (n = 17, 20%), race/racism (n = 17, 20%), social justice (n = 12, 14%), gender/sexism (n = 10, 12%), and LGBTQ+ (n = 8, 10%). The frequency of DEI titles each year ranged from 1% (2010, 2018) to 17% (2021) with an increase in DEI content in 2021 (n = 24, 17%).

Conclusions:
Although professional medical organizations like the ACLP are poised to leverage their continuing medical education platforms embedded in annual meeting programming to train consultation-liaison psychiatrists on DEI topics, our findings suggest more work is needed to develop and promote DEI-focused educational programming for their annual meetings.

Keywords:
annual meeting; continuing education; diversity; equity; inclusion; professional development.

Annotation

The finding:
A thoughtful analysis of ACLP annual meeting content titles between 2010 to 2021 demonstrated that only a mere 84 of 2615 titles contained diversity, equity, or inclusion (DEI) related themes. 2019 was the first year which included content from each of the six DEI categories, specifically, culture/diversity, LGBTQIA+, bias/disparities, race/racism, social justice, and gender & sexism. ACLP leaders and ACLP annual meeting program chairs will benefit from the ability to proactively include content to help combat pervasive and problematic health care disparities.

Strength and weaknesses:
This article provides a unique, and simultaneously concrete, method by which to assess the prevalence of DEI related content at ACLP annual meetings. The article acknowledges the lack of clear benchmarks to allot for annual meeting content for any given professional organization. Given C-L psychiatrists’ reliance on ACLP as a source of cutting edge information, the authors could have posited that ACLP’s lack of DEI content may have diminished awareness of health care disparities in vulnerable, medically ill patient populations with mental illness. The considerations and limitations from the authors are incredibly comprehensive, including the important caveat that annual meeting content abstracts were not reviewed, which may have led to overestimation (or underestimation) of DEI related content.

Relevance:
C-L psychiatrists should be aware that the ACLP annual meeting content over the past decade has woefully lacked in DEI content. C-L psychiatrists can utilize the findings from this article to advocate for increased transparency from ACLP, support the DEI subcommittee, and consider ways their own clinical work interfaces with important DEI concepts. This is, of course, in addition to the incredible suggestions from the authors of this article: create a formal DEI track at the annual meeting, require abstract submissions to self-identify their inclusion of DEI content, and increase the diversity of abstract reviewers.