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According to the Association of Academic Medical Colleges, only 6% of practicing US ophthalmologists identify as members of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. 1 This despite the fact that the US Census Bureau reported that these racial and ethnic groups comprised 30.7% of the population in 2014. 2 While medicine in general is less diverse than the national population, many other medical specialties are far more racially diverse than ophthalmology, with at least 12.6% of all physicians identifying as underrepresented in medicine (URiM). This lack of diversity is also reflected in ophthalmology's professional pipeline, where only 7.7% of ophthalmology residents hail from URiM groups whereas 13.8% of all active US citizen-residents identified as being from a URiM group in 2019 and 2020. 2,3 There is no evidence that these disparities are lessening; in fact, further studies show a slight downward trend in the percentage of URiM ophthalmology residents in the US from 2005 to 2015. 2 The contributions of racial/ethnic diversity in the health care workforce to improving patient outcomes have been well established, and the lack of diversity in ophthalmology has important implications for patients as well as our colleagues. A 2021 call to action 4 highlighted the particular disparities in eye health and eye care that exist in racial and ethnic minority groups. Black and Hispanic youth experience blindness and visual impairment at higher rates than White youth (1.9-fold and 1.5-fold higher, respectively). Rates of glaucoma are nearly 2-fold higher for Black individuals compared with White individuals. Recent evidence also shows that diabetic retinopathy affects Black individuals at 1.4-fold the rate of White individuals. 4 Among the many factors that contribute to the disparate outcomes in eye health, it has been suggested that the lack of URiM clinicians in the ophthalmology workforce may be a major factor. 4 Several other medical specialties have implemented strategies to address the lack of URiM trainees. For example, in 2013, the cardiology faculty of The Ohio State University Medical Center, Columbus, targeted strong, diverse resident applicants. They deliberately restructured the focus of the interview day to highlight mentorship, sent targeted postinterview communications to highly competitive applicants, and established a new mentorship program. In addition, they formed a special URiM subcommittee of the selection committee to focus on URiM applications before adding them to the general pool. Members of the department leadership personally visited racially and ethnically diverse residency programs (outside of their institution) to present Grand Rounds Lectures. While visiting these medi-VIEWPOINT

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