• Mariam Aoun, Antonio Dekhou, Anna Jahshan, and Kavitha Chinnaiyan.
• Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, Rochester, MI, USA. Electronic address: mariamaoun@oakland.edu.
• J Natl Med Assoc. 2022 Aug 1; 114 (4): 451-455.

IntroductionCardiologists serve a diverse population of patients, yet the lack of diversity within the cardiology workforce has continued to persist and does not represent the composition of the patient population in the United States. Although medical schools and internal medicine residency programs have witnessed major improvements in diversity, the field of cardiology has not emulated these patterns.MethodsGender, race, and ethnicity data from the graduate medical education supplements published annually in the Journal of the American Medical Association from 2014 through 2020 were analyzed. The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the recruitment of female trainees in cardiology was also investigated.Results And DiscussionWomen represented 24.6% of cardiology trainees in the year 2020, which is a minor increase from 21.2% in 2014. The percentage of Hispanic trainees has slightly decreased from 6.90% in 2014 to 6.26% in 2020, while the percentage of Black trainees has only increased from 5.45% in 2014 to 5.50% in 2020. The data demonstrate a clear disparity and a desperate need for diversification of the cardiology trainee workforce. The COVID-19 pandemic may also exacerbate this lack of diversity in upcoming years due to the reemergence of inequities in social responsibilities between male and female trainees.ImplicationsStrong action must be taken on an institutional level to shift the culture in cardiology to one that is more appealing to women and underrepresented minorities in order to better serve an increasingly diverse population.Copyright © 2022 National Medical Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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