03:54 PM Abstract No. 350 The IR Summer Scholars: a 12-year assessment of a structured medical student research program

Abstract

Purpose: The Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) has placed an emphasis on promoting diversity and inclusion, particularly of gender and race. To increase gender diversity amongst speakers at the Annual Scientific Meetings (ASM), the Annual Meeting Committees (AMC) for the meetings held in 2017 and 2018 strongly promoted inclusion of female speakers by directly inviting speakers, while allowing substitutions offered by the coordinators. This study investigates the impact of the AMC's initiative by reporting the gender trends for invited faculty at the 2017 and 2018 ASMs. Materials: Faculty rosters for the 2017 and 2018 SIR ASM were stratified by gender to quantify female representation at the plenary sessions, categorical courses, symposia, self-assessment modules and "meet-the-expert" sessions, collectively called "podium sessions." Keynote events and award ceremonies were excluded. Results: 2017 and 2018 saw a significant increase in female representation at podium sessions with 89 of 684 (15%) and 83 of 595 (16%) presentations delivered by women (vs. 9% in 2016, p¼0.01). Despite the new structure of invitations, the proportion of female speakers differed by the gender of coordinators leading the session. Of the 103 podium sessions at the 2018 meeting, 86 (83%) were led by all-male coordinators and 17 (17%) were led by mixed or all-female coordinators. Having at least one female coordinator correlated with significantly higher proportion of female speakers (46 of 124, 37%) compared to that for only male coordinators (37 of 471, 8%; p<0.0001). Similar results were observed for the 2017 meeting, where the presence of a female coordinator resulted in a significantly higher proportion of female speakers (40% vs. 8%, p<0.0001). Conclusions: Our study supports the work done by the current and past AMCs to increase diversity at the SIR Annual Scientific Meeting. The inclusion of more women as coordinators will further increase gender diversity at the podium.