IV.E. Diversity Policy Statement

The LSU Health Science Center believes that diversity among leadership, faculty, and learners is essential to fulfilling the institution’s academic mission. The contributions of individuals with diverse backgrounds and perspectives enriches the educational experience for all learners, enables us to better address health care inequities, increases cultural competency in clinical care, improves service to our community, and expands the scope of our scholarship. A diverse environment also fosters learner understanding, and effective delivery of care to individuals of diverse backgrounds, which is integral to the mission of the school.  As an inclusive community, we embrace the full range of human difference: race, gender, ethnicity, age, culture, national origin, religious belief, physical ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic class, and political convictions.  

We are committed to fostering growth in the matriculation of African-American, Hispanic, Vietnamese, LGBT students as well as students from underserved rural regions of Louisiana. Institutional efforts to qualitatively strengthen the climate of inclusion and diversity of our learning community are inclusive of a focus on the development of effective pipelines for recruitment of students and residents from communities which are underrepresented in our region’s health professions workforce. The institutional mission of advancing the quality of the educational climate, promoting effectiveness of health equity research, and fully engaging equitable clinical service is supported by a focus on the recruitment and development of basic science and clinical faculty, and senior academic leadership who are underrepresented in our region’s academic medical community with an emphasis on women, African American, Hispanic, Vietnamese, and LGBT faculty.

The effectiveness and progress of our pipeline program development will be evaluated through the implementation of systematic approaches to monitor trends in recruitment of students, residents, and faculty from target underrepresented communities. It is recognized that the creation of greater campus diversity may not be readily reflected among groups that are not easily measured.  We will assess the impact of our outreach efforts within diverse target communities in terms of the quality of outreach messaging and programming.  As we accept the opportunities to demonstrate leadership in our community in advancing health equity, we embrace the importance and value of continued growth of institutional diversity as an essential element of success in fulfilling this mission.