Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Why aren't there more Filipino-American Doctors?

 

Why aren’t there more Filipino American doctors?

A few weeks ago, a good friend texted me saying that she was asked a really thoughtful question during one of her residency interviews. The interviewer noted that my friend is Filipino and asked her, “I noticed there aren’t a lot of Filipino doctors, so how has your cultural background influenced your approach to patient care?”

It is true that we have an abundance of Filipino nurses in our healthcare system, but what about doctors? Filipinos fall under the larger umbrella of Asian Americans, who are not considered to be underrepresented in medicine, but Filipinos are an absent minority. According to AAMC’s 2019 Diversity in Medicine report, 17.1% of active U.S. physicians identify as Asian. However, only 4.6% of Asian physicians in the U.S. identify as Filipino. This underrepresentation is also evident in medical education. Filipinos consisted of 4.3% of Asian applicants to U.S. medical schools during the 2018-2019 academic year. This means that less than 1% of total applicants identified as Filipino.

This is the truth we face, even though Filipino Americans are the third largest Asian subpopulation and one of the fastest growing ethnic minorities in the United States. In fact, Filipino Americans make up nearly a quarter of California’s Asian American population, but only about 6% of the UC’s medical school matriculants. The majority of Filipino physicians in California are international medical graduates.

It is incredibly important for Filipino patients to have access to more physicians who look like them and understand their culture, language, and traditions. The world of medicine is extraordinarily difficult for patients to navigate but having a provider who identifies with their specific cultural needs can greatly improve healthcare outcomes. This is especially crucial since Filipinos suffer from diabetes at higher rates than non-Hispanic whites and have a higher prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors such as hypertension and obesity compared to other Asian Americans.

I’m proud to identify as a Filipino American woman who will be entering the workforce as a pediatric resident physician in a few months. I wish I could say that I had inspiring Filipino faculty or attendings who guided me along the way, but I didn’t. However, I’m thankful that I found a group of intelligent, kind, and like-minded classmates in medical school who also shared the goal of wanting to become culturally competent Filipino American physicians.

As for my friend, she effortlessly answered her interviewer’s question by talking about applying her parents’ immigrant values towards advocating for her patients and wanting to serve as representation for Filipino youth who may be interested in pursuing a career in medicine. I recognize that we have a long way to go, but I can’t help but be excited and hopeful for future nanays and tatays to see doctors who look just like them.

Briana Mancenido, M.D. Candidate
Drexel University College of Medicine Class of 2021

Sources:

https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/workforce/interactive-data/figure-18-percentage-all-active-physicians-race/ethnicity-2018

https://www.aamcdiversityfactsandfigures.org/section-ii-current-status-of-us-physician-workforce/index.html#fig2

https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/workforce/interactive-data/figure-3-percentage-asian-alone-applicants-us-medical-schools-asian-subgroups-academic-year-2018

http://greenlining.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ClosingDataGapsAANHPIUCMedicalSchoolDiversity.pdf

  Fuller-Thomson, R. (2017). Diabetes among non-obese Filipino Americans: Findings from a large population-based study. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 108(1), e36–e42. https://doi.org/10.17269/CJPH.108.5761

  Borja‐Hart, G. (2019). Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk assessment and predictors of statin use in Filipino‐American Women. Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 44(4), 632–639. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpt.12837

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