The Health Equity and Diversity Committee serves as a resource to the ATS Executive Committee and Board of Directors on issues related to health equity and diversity within our membership and leadership. This committee is charged with promoting diversity and inclusion within the organization and with creating a plan for addressing health equity and diversity issues through cross committee collaboration and the ATS at-large.
Chair
Juan P. Wisnivesky, MD, DrPH, ATSF
New York, NY
Vice Chair
Stephanie Lovinsky-Desir, MD, MS, ATSF
New York, NY
Benchmarks, 2024-2025
- Foster diversity of the workforce through encouraging non-majority groups to enter the fields of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine; co-develop events to promote URM to enter the field of pulmonary medicine as part of the International Conference.
- Monitor health equity and diversity initiatives throughout the ATS organization, serve as a resource for committees collaborating on projects related to health equity, promote diversity within ATS membership related task forces, committees, special projects, and overall leadership; and periodically report progress of ATS health equity and diversity initiatives to the Executive Committee and Board of Directors; implement 1-2 projects proposed in the health equity roadmap.
- Lead and encourage projects, symposia and publications related to lung health in vulnerable populations to help raise awareness about health equity and diversity issues; 1-2 HEDC sponsored documents in 2024, submit 2-3 symposiums/workshops in 2024.
- Implement, evaluate, and improve the fellowship program to develop ATS leaders in health equity and in advocacy; work with the development team to help fund an additional fellowship.
- Continue to review and provide input on the current proportion of ethnic/racial minorities in ATS leadership positions and key positions within assemblies.
- Continue to enhance and sustain the ATS mentoring programming for early career professionals targeted at those who are under-represented in medicine and science. Revise as needed to maintain engagement of participants and conduct survey of participants to assess satisfaction and impact.
- Support the implementation of priority strategies from the Health Equity and Diversity Committee Road Map of initiatives and purpose metrics for evaluation and benchmarks of success for these activities.
- This committee is responsible for reviewing content it has previously posted to the ATS website to determine if it should be updated and moved to the new site or archived/deleted. Using parameters established by the ATS Digital Content Committee as a guideline, committee members will make necessary modifications to ensure the content is accurate and conforms with established ATS standards. Reviews are to be completed by December 1, 2024.