Diversifying the Caregiver Workforce in Northeast Ohio

Rethinking the approach to medicine, questioning old perspectives, is key to improving health disparities in Black and brown communities, says Bethany Studenic, the co-founder of a diversity research firm called Enlightened Solutions, in a recent interview with WKYC in Cleveland.

“Patients can identify with people who look like them or [where they] come from,” notes Lisa Baszynski, Cleveland Clinic senior nursing education director.

Their comments were elicited by WKYC’s Romney Smith, who recently looked into the needs – and plans – for pipelines to build a more diverse health care workforce in Northeast Ohio.

When Smith spoke with John T. Langell, M.D., Ph.D., the president of Northeast Ohio Medical University, he said, “We need to be better about training the population we have, not just to make them diverse and reflective of the community, but to give them the tools they need to be better at taking care of the community.”

Read the full WKYC article.