{"doi":"10.1093/aje/kwae104","title":"Representation and inclusion among members and affiliates of the Society for Epidemiologic Research: findings from the 2021 diversity and inclusion survey","abstract":"Representation and inclusion are stated priorities for many scientific and professional organizations, including the Society for Epidemiologic Research (SER), which was founded in 1967 with the intention of bringing together epidemiologists across career stages and specialties.1,2 Representation and inclusion are necessary for fostering safe and equitable educational and professional environments, recruiting future generations of researchers and practitioners, and addressing critical public health questions. However, there has been persistent underrepresentation and systemic exclusion of marginalized groups in the sciences, including epidemiology,2,-12 which are symptoms of interpersonal and structural racism, classism, sexism, ableism, heteronormativity, religious-based discrimination, and other dimensions of marginalization.13,14 To advance SER’s goals, the Diversity and Inclusion Committee has sought to characterize representation and inclusion among SER members and affiliates through surveys conducted in 2018 and 2021. In this study, we assessed trends in representation within SER, made comparisons with relevant benchmarks, and discussed barriers to inclusion. In the 2018 baseline survey, many groups were underrepresented relative to the US population, particularly transgender individuals, Black/African American and Hispanic/Latinx people, and first-generation college students.11 Moreover, women and people with certain racial/ethnic and religious identities were less likely to participate in SER activities or to report feeling welcomed. This letter provides primary findings from an updated assessment of representation and inclusion among SER members and affiliates and situates the experiences of SER members in broader literatures on diversity and inclusion. The complete report, including a more detailed discussion of recommendations informed in part by survey respondents, is available on the SER website15 and eScholarship Repository.16 We invited SER members and affiliates (former members and individuals who had participated in SER activities) to participate in an online survey between May and September 2021. The survey was adapted from the version administered in 201811 and comprised sociodemographic questions across several domains, including individual, educational, career, and institutional, as well as perceptions of inclusion in SER. To compare representation in SER with the field of epidemiology more broadly, we obtained demographic data on race/ethnicity from the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) for all faculty and US citizen students attending US-based institutions. To compare representation among survey respondents born or residing in the United States with US population diversity, we obtained nationally-representative sociodemographic data from the 2020 census, with the addition of data on representation of Middle Eastern/North African individuals from the Los Angeles Times17 and sexual/gender minorities from the Williams Institute at UCLA.18 To examine academic institutional diversity, we used data from the 2021-2022 US News and World Report (USNWR) Global University Rankings, which appraised 1750 institutions globally and ranked them based on peer assessments and bibliometric indicators.19 We also identified which universities met the criteria for Minority Serving Institutions (MSI), including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs). We (D.J.X.G. and V.P.P.) translated the present article to Spanish (Appendix S1), the second most commonly spoken language among respondents. We convened the full authorship team to discuss our positionality and wrote a collective statement (Appendix S2), as the positionality of researchers can influence the choice of topic, epistemological framing, ontology, methodological approaches, connection to participants, and communication of findings.20,21 The survey instrument is included as Appendix S3. The","journal":"American Journal of Epidemiology","year":2024,"id":498429,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9464,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":572950,"name":"Brooke S. Staley","orcid":"0000-0003-1502-602X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":412357,"name":"Sarah B. Andrea","orcid":"0000-0001-8712-7829","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":369130,"name":"Elizabeth A. DeVilbiss","orcid":"0000-0002-8840-0505","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":304343,"name":"David S. Fink","orcid":"0000-0003-1531-1525","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1345160,"name":"Courtney Peña","orcid":"0000-0002-7381-7789","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1109337,"name":"Domonique Reed","orcid":"0000-0002-4593-6860","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1345464,"name":"Mary V Díaz Santana","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1345161,"name":"Luther‐King Fasehun","orcid":"0000-0002-8798-5433","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1345162,"name":"AJ Alvero","orcid":"0000-0003-4642-9788","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1345465,"name":"Obafemi Babalola","orcid":null,"position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":304341,"name":"Victor Puac‐Polanco","orcid":"0000-0002-6024-6542","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":462065,"name":"Caroline A. Thompson","orcid":"0000-0001-9990-9756","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1310330,"name":"Cara L. Frankenfeld","orcid":"0000-0002-2318-0791","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":55322,"name":"Lindsay Fernández‐Rhodes","orcid":"0000-0001-6985-423X","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":73780,"name":"David S. López","orcid":"0000-0002-2321-0372","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":977568,"name":"Hoda S. Abdel Magid","orcid":"0000-0002-5270-1197","position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":326966,"name":"David J. X. González","orcid":"0000-0003-4457-0964","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":55,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:09:42.181447Z","pmid":"38863127","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}