Health Disparities
Minority tax in academic epidemiology: its status and recommendations Sarah Bassiouni* Sarah Bassiouni Jada Wiggleton-Little Emily Martin
Background: “Minority tax” is a well-elucidated term within the fields of clinical medicine and academic medicine. However, there has been a paucity of discussion of this concept within public health and epidemiology. Here, we discuss the current state of the research, as well as goals and strategy in incorporating discussions of minority tax within academic epidemiology settings.
Methods: PubMed was searched for “minority tax” in conjunction with “epidemiology”, “epidemiol*”, “public health”, and “population health”.
Results: This resulted in 282 papers with some combination of these specific terms. The vast majority of results were within the context of clinical medicine and academic medicine settings in the U.S.; most of these were through the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Two papers outside of academic medicine mentioned the term “minority tax” in their backgrounds: one was within the fields of nutrition and obesity, and the other was in data science.
Discussion: The paucity of literature, peer-reviewed and otherwise, regarding minority tax within both the larger public health field and within epidemiology specifically reflects an opportunity to strengthen our academic training pathways. It is well documented that students and trainees from historically marginalized groups (STHMG) are more likely to take on additional, often uncompensated, roles in their training. Efforts to reduce minority tax among STHMG can include intentional recruitment and retention of STHMG, structured mentorship and advancement programs and transparent resources around funding opportunities.
Conclusions: The results of this search indicate that epidemiology as a field has an opportunity to consider minority tax within an academic setting. This includes not only studying how it presents in our students and trainees, but also incorporating strategies to improve the likelihood that our colleagues can practice epidemiology with their full potential.