Pediatrics 2025: The AMSPDC Workforce Initiative

The Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs (AMSPDC) summoned a multiorganizational Workforce Summit in February 2020, which assembled leaders from many of the organizations that are involved in caring for children across the domains of advocacy, clinical care, education, policy, and research. The goal was to initiate the necessary dialogue needed to strengthen the pediatric workforce, which initiated a project called Pediatrics 2025: The AMSPDC Workforce Initiative.

This Summit emphasized 2 important long-term goals for the pediatric community:

(1) Determining strategies to expand high-quality medical students who pursue training in categorical Pediatrics, Medicine-Pediatrics, and combined Pediatric Subspecialty training programs and (2) Enhancing the recruitment of pediatric residents into pediatric fellowship programs, with a focus on fellowship programs that struggle to fill their training positions.

To achieve these goals the following objectives were materialized: (1) Understanding recent pediatric workforce data and recent trends concerning categorical pediatric residency training and subspecialty fellowship programs; (2) Identifying the gaps in the current data system and the challenges with reviewing workforce data; (3) Identifying questions, for succeeding data analysis, that will add important information to the dialogue concerning the pediatric workforce; (4) Developing possible action steps that concentrate on key approaches to strengthen the pediatric workforce; and (5) Articulating a timeline for work, succeeding meetings and issues for future consideration.

SOURCE- Vinci RJ, Degnon L, Devaskar SU. Pediatrics 2025: The AMSPDC Workforce Initiative. The Journal of Pediatrics, 2021;237:P5-8. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2021.02.004