Becker's Hospital Review

47 WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP Black women heavily concentrated in low-wage healthcare jobs, study finds By Kelly Gooch M ore than one in five Black women in the U.S. workforce are employed in healthcare and are most likely to hold the lowest-paying, most hazardous jobs, according to a study published Feb. 7 in Health Affairs. e study — by Janette Dill, PhD, associate professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and Mignon Duffy, PhD, asso- ciate professor at the University of Massachu- setts Lowell — examined data from the Cen- sus Bureau's American Community Survey. Researchers used data from 2019, the latest year available. ey found that Black women represent 6.9 percent of the U.S. workforce and 13.7 per- cent of the healthcare workforce. Black women also have a higher likelihood of working in the healthcare sector (23 percent) compared with white, Hispanic and Asian women and are more concentrated in the lowest-wage direct care jobs (licensed prac- tical nurse and aide occupations), according to the study. "Care work is a critical arena in which Black women are located at the intersection of racism and sexism," researchers concluded. "Investing in Black women through targeted investment in care infrastructure can begin to undermine some of the ideological con- structions and structural barriers that have devalued both." ey recommended actions such as rais- ing wages for lower-paying jobs in health- care, ensuring adequate opportunities for low-wage healthcare workers to advance, and addressing racism in the pipeline of healthcare professions. Study limitations included that researchers used only one year of data and had con- straints because of certain coding in the American Community Survey. n Female healthcare workers are scaling back — here's why By Georgina Gonzalez S houldering the burden of household duties, spending more time on patients and an inability to disconnect from work may all be reasons female physicians are reducing their hours or quitting al- together, according to a Jan. 19 Harvard Business Review report. According to research conducted by Press Ganey that collect- ed more than 200,000 responses to physician surveys, female physicians tend to spend more time per patient than their male counterparts while also spending more time documenting cases in EHR systems. This is on top of nonprofessional responsibilities that disproportionately fall to women. One study found that during the pandemic, female physicians have been more likely to be responsible for childcare, schooling and household tasks than male physicians. Data shows that during medical internships, rates of depression for both men and women increase, but for women the effect is greater, and female physicians have higher burnout rates than men. When physicians were asked how well they can decompress and discon- nect from work, female physicians reported lesser ability to dis- tance their minds from work when at home, increasing their stress. Although male and female physicians responded that they find similar amounts of meaning in their work, women may not find ways to leave work behind and recover in the same way as men, the report said. To counteract the trend of female physicians scaling back their jobs, health systems can focus on increasing job flexibility, center- ing respect for all in their organizational values and ensuring there are equitable opportunities for advancement and pay, according to the report. n Dr. Walensky: Overhauling public health system 'too big for the CDC alone' By Georgina Gonzalez C DC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, said the U.S. needs to rethink its approach to public health and that the CDC alone can- not fix the system, Politico reported Jan. 21. Dr. Walensky said the CDC's job is not to fix public health or the pandemic on its own, and she insist- ed wide reforms are needed. "Businesses have to help, the government has to help, school systems have to help. This is too big for the CDC alone," she said. Dr. Walensky also called for large-scale invest- ments in the healthcare workforce, advocat- ing for recruiting more statisticians and data analysts, hiring nurses locally and staffing emer- gency departments. The public health sector has lost almost 80,000 workers in the last decade, but she said she is hopeful the pandemic is a catalyst for change that could reverse that trend of attrition. "You can't create a workforce. You have to upskill the workforce. We need to train it. We need to make public health an attractive workforce to en- ter," Dr. Walensky told Politico. n

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