Physician Workforce Diversity Partnership Advancing

CommonSpirit Health has committed more than $100 million over 10 years to the More In Common Alliance, a partnership with Morehouse School of Medicine.

The More In Common Alliance, a physician workforce diversity partnership between CommonSpirit Health and the Morehouse School of Medicine that was launched in 2021, is making progress.

Lack of diversity in the healthcare workforce risks undermining trust and patient health, according to a report published by the Urban Institute. In the Urban Institute report, only 22.2% of Black adults reported being of the same race as their healthcare providers compared to 73.8% of White adults, and only 23.1% of Hispanic/Latinx adults reported racial, ethnic, and language concordance with their usual healthcare provider.

Racial, ethnic, and language concordance between clinicians and their patients makes a difference, says Veronica Mallett, MD, senior vice president at CommonSpirit. "There is data to support that concordant racial, ethnic, and language factors between physicians and patients matter. It matters because it improves health outcomes. It has been shown to overcome some of the social and economic drivers of health outcomes by creating trust and by allowing the patient to have care by someone who understands their language, culture, and lived experience."

CommonSpirit has committed more than $100 million over 10 years to support the More In Common Alliance. One of the goals of the partnership is to raise another $100 million through philanthropy, she says. "Part of the work I am responsible for leading is to find donors, high net-worth individuals, grants, foundations, and institutions to support this effort."

Philanthropy work so far includes three solicitations for "substantial dollars" and a $2 million grant that is supporting a family medicine residency program in California, Mallett says. "The grant is designed to support the startup costs of new primary care programs in the interest of addressing the looming workforce shortage and to train more primary care physicians in California."

Four primary "work streams" for the More In Common Alliance are graduate medical education, undergraduate medical education, culturally competent care, and research, she says. "The goal of the alliance is to affect and improve health equity by diversifying the healthcare workforce, and we are going to do that by doubling the class size at the Morehouse School of Medicine and creating five regional medical campuses in order to accommodate the increased need for students to have clinical exposure."

Morehouse currently has 125 medical school students.

The More In Common Alliance has identified three sites for regional medical campuses: Chattanooga, Tennessee, Lexington, Kentucky, and Seattle.

"In Chattanooga, our focus is on African American students. In Lexington, the focus is on rural students, both African American and Caucasian. For example, we know that Kentucky has slipped to 45^th in the nation for overall health, and rural Kentuckians both Black and White experience worse health outcomes. Our goal is to recruit from that population, and we have partnered with Kentucky State University, which is a historically Black university, to have a robust applicant pool and to have some competitive matriculants that would come from Kentucky and return to Kentucky to serve as physicians," Mallett says.

In Seattle, the More In Common Alliance is targeting the African American population in Tacoma, Washington, as well as the Alaska Native and Pacific Islander populations, which are among the least represented groups in health professions, she says.

The More In Common Alliance is planning to establish two residency programs in Bakersfield, California, Mallet says. The first program at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital is slated to start July 2025. The second program at Mercy Hospitals of Bakersfield is expected to start in 2028 or 2029.

As part of the partnership, CommonSpirit will be providing training for culturally competent care to the health system's clinicians, Mallett says. "The plan is to train CommonSpirit clinicians on providing care through what is being referred to as a culturally humble lens. The idea is to listen to the patient and to understand what they feel is important to know about their culture. Clinicians need to ask, to listen, and to observe, which will impact the ability of the patient to form a trust relationship and be able to adhere to provider recommendations."

Progress has been made in the research work stream, she says. "The CommonSpirit Health Research Institute and the Morehouse School of Medicine are partnering to collaborate on at least two research projects a year focused on health inequities and approaches to eliminating inequities. The first research project is on birth equity. We are partnering on rolling out a birth equity toolkit across CommonSpirit and a project training community health workers and patient navigators to help reduce the inequity in maternal mortality and morbidity."

The More In Common Alliance is unique, Mallett says. "There has not been a partnership between a medical school and a health system with the investment of the size that CommonSpirit has made to increase diversity in the physician workforce. We want to remove excuses for why we cannot have a more diverse workforce. We hope that this will be a model for other health systems."

Related: CommonSpirit and Morehouse Addressing Underrepresented Physicians and Health Equity