Over the past few decades, there’s been a growing awareness throughout organizations of every kind that diversity and inclusion are beneficial in a multitude of ways: offering varied points of view for creative problem-solving and fostering deeper understanding to serve people of many backgrounds.

These ideas are particularly true in academic medicine, says Johns Hopkins otolaryngologist Sandra Lin. Studies have shown that patients can have better outcomes when treated with racially concordant physicians and that underrepresented minority (URM) faculty are more likely to work with underserved populations and can play important roles in solving health disparities.

However, she says, academic medicine in general—and Johns Hopkins and its Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery in particular—still lagged in embracing diversity and inclusion. As recently as 2004, there was only one woman and one URM out of 17 clinical faculty, and only one woman and one URM out of nine basic science faculty. There were no women in leadership roles, or even past the rank of assistant professor. These female faculty earned as little as 88 percent of male colleagues salaries.

To help improve these numbers, Lin and her colleagues within the department convened a diversity and inclusion committee. After a daylong retreat, they developed a series of initiatives. These included plans to create a climate of diversity, aggressively recruit women and URM faculty, achieve parity of salary at rank regardless of gender or minority status, provide mentorship to women and URM faculty, and increase the pipeline of qualified women and URM candidates.

Over the next few years, these efforts paid off by 2014, the percentage of women clinical faculty increased from 5.8 percent to 23.7 percent; women basic science faculty increased from 11.1 percent to 37.5 percent. The number of women at associate professor rank increased from zero to eight. URM faculty increased from two to four; URM full professors increased in number from zero to one. Salary differences for female faculty were completely wiped out, with no differences by rank and subspecialty training.

To diversify candidates for future faculty, the department instituted a clerkship for visiting URM medical students that pairs them with faculty mentors. So far, 27 students have come through this program, with three eventually matching at Hopkins as residents.

This year, the department will be celebrating a decade of implementing these initiatives and their results at its second annual Diversity Lecture in December.

 Lin notes that other academic medical institutions are now emulating these efforts to expand diversity and inclusion within their own ranks.

“We’re leaders in the field of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery, not only in teaching, research, and patient care, but also in diversity and inclusion,” Lin says. “It’s been a ripple effect. We are hopefully the pebble in the pond that will increase diversity and inclusion not just within our own institution but throughout the entire field.”