Longitudinal Racial and Ethnic Representation in US Dental Schools Between 2011 and 2023

Background: Diversity, inclusion, and representation within the dental care workforce are imperatives for equity in access to and quality of care. We determined longitudinal representation by race and ethnicity among first-year students and graduates in US dental schools from 2011-2012 to 2022-2023 and compared race and ethnicity representation between private and public schools from 2015-2016 to 2022-2023. Methods: Racial and ethnic representation among first-year students and graduates in public and private US dental schools (obtained from the Survey of Dental Education) was assessed using prevalence ratios (PR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) relative to estimates of the US adult population (obtained from the American Community Survey) for corresponding years. Results: Despite slight increases in representation over time for some groups, those identifying as Non-Hispanic (NH)-Black or African American and Hispanic or Latino remained severely underrepresented in 2022-2023 among first-year students (PR = 0.63, 95%CI 0.57-0.69; PR = 0.54, 95%CI 0.50-0.58, respectively) and graduates (PR = 0.48, 95%CI 0.43-0.53; PR = 0.58, 95%CI 0.54-0.62, respectively). There was fluctuation over time of representation of first-year students who identified as NH-American Indian or Alaska Native (PRs between 0.34 and 0.88) and NH-Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (PRs between 0.49 and 2.78). Private dental schools exhibited a somewhat greater representation of minoritized groups compared to public dental schools among first-year students, with similar patterns of persistent underrepresentation of some groups among both types of dental schools. Conclusions: Slight improvements in racial/ethnic representation in dental school enrollment over the past decade for some groups have not been enough to close the gap of underrepresentation of racial and ethnically minoritized groups.