Healthcare Disparities: Encouraging Change Through Continuing Professional Development.

Abstract

Throughout history, healthcare disparities have contributed harm to patient's physical, mental, and financial wellbeing. Use of continuing professional development (CPD) can relay practical application of strategies to mitigate healthcare disparities. However, there is limited data on the impact of disparities focused CPD. In this article, we summarise quantitative data surrounding seven CPD programmes with a focus on healthcare disparities. In totality 41,588 healthcare providers interacted with educational content in these programmes. Learners responding to assessment questions yielded a 25% improvement in knowledge-based questions and a 27% improvement competence-based questions (p < 0.05 for each). Lastly, 1101 (2.5%) learners participated in a post-activity evaluation. Of those, 59% reported use of the information from these CPD programmes to reinforce their current practice, while 34% planned to make changes in their current practice to implement strategies to reduce or mitigate healthcare disparities. These findings show promise for use of CPD to improve awareness and help healthcare providers understand and mitigate disparities.