Enhancing equity within the promotions dossier evaluation—Strategies to mitigate biases

Gender, racial, and ethnic disparities in career advancement in academic medicine continue to exist despite ongoing calls to diversify the physician workforce and leadership representation. Compared with white men, women and racially and ethnically underrepresented physicians are more likely to enter academic medicine, but less likely to achieve promotion. Cited barriers to academic advancement include ambiguous or inconsistent criteria for consideration for promotion and lack of standard processes for reviewing applications. The promotions committee therefore is an important rate-limiting step subject to biases that impact not just tenure, but also leadership opportunities and physician salaries. This perspective article explores areas where biases influence promotion criteria evaluation, including but not limited to accomplishments within teaching, research, and/or service, external recognition, candidate statements, and reference letters. The article then will propose strategies helpful to promotion committee members to help mitigate these biases and provide more equitable promotion evaluation.