LISTA and ADE partnership will work to facilitate digital advocacy, digital literacy,
job creation and economic development in regards to digital empowerment initiatives
Today, Latinos in Information Science and Technology Association (LISTA), the nation’s leading organization of Latino technology professionals and the Alliance for Digital Equality (ADE), a nonprofit organization that provides broadband solutions and broadband related services to underserved and un-served communities, are excited to announce a partnership to facilitate digital empowerment initiatives.
The strategic alliance of ADE and LISTA combines the collective skills, knowledge and experience of two diverse technology-based organizations, enabling them to work together to facilitate digital advocacy, digital literacy, job creation and economic development in regards to digital empowerment initiatives. In particular, the MSI Wireless Technology Act, the Workforce Investment Act, the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA), among others.
“We are forming this partnership right now because this is a pivotal time in the race to close the digital divide. Access to affordable high-speed Internet and broadband technology is a stepping stone to the opportunities of economic prosperity,” said Julius H. Hollis, Chairman of ADE. “As we focus on turning our economy around, we must make sure that those Americans currently in un-served and underserved communities are not left behind and further marginalized in this economy.”
“Both LISTA and ADE have worked hard individually to provide and enhance digital empowerment opportunities for communities of color, now as LISTA joins ADE’s Board of Directors we will combine our unique strengths and expand our reach,” said Jose Marquez, President and CEO of Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association. “This will strengthen our ability to make a difference. I am very excited to work with the ADE leadership team to further these important goals.”
Together, ADE and LISTA will pursue initiatives in order to increase Latino and African American employment opportunities within American based information sciences, telecommunication, and technology industries. The partners will target project opportunities that make technology applications available to communities of color for educational purposes, for job training and development, and to enable fuller participation in the learning, civic engagement and cultural opportunities afforded jointly or separately by ADE-LISTA utilizing online technologies.
“As part of the LISTA/ADE Partnership, we will conduct a series of surveys of African Americans and Latinos in the tech sector to measure which tech companies are leading the way in corporate responsibility relative to their Latino and African American inclusion in higher management within their company. While Latinos have made strides there are areas in the tech industry we still have little to no representation, boards, upper management and key decision making positions are still scarce at some of the most successful tech companies, we can’t ignore Latinos in high tech anymore, it is just bad business,” said Marquez.
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About Latinos in Information Science and Technology Association (LISTA) (www.a-lista.org)
Latinos in Information Science and Technology Association (LISTA) promotes the utilization of the technology sectors for the empowerment of the Latino community. We are an organization that is committed to bringing various elements of Technology under one central hub to facilitate our partners, members and the community with the leverage and education they need to succeed in a highly advanced technologically driven society. LISTA Mission is to educate, motivate and encourage the use of technology in the Latino community and empowering them to bridge the digital divide.
About The Alliance for Digital Equality
The Alliance for Digital Equality (ADE), headquartered in Atlanta, GA, is a national, non-profit consumer advocacy organization that serves to facilitate and ensure equal access to technology in underserved and un-served communities. The Alliance also serves as a bridge between policymakers and minority individuals in order to help the public understand how legislative and regulatory policies regarding new technologies can impact and empower their daily lives. For more information on The Alliance for Digital Equality, please visit www.alliancefordigitalequality.org
Latin America continues to drag behind the rest of the world when it comes to information technology, a brake on the region’s competitiveness. But Internet access is expected to explode there this decade. Leading that charge is California-based Cisco Systems, the fast-growing world leader in IT infrastructure with more than $35 billion in sales and 65,000 employees.
Cisco has been on a buying spree the past two years, bolstering its digital resources in high-speed optical networking, IP-based mobile infrastructure, data center automation and video communications, including its purchase of Pure Digital Technologies, creator of the best-selling Flip video cameras, and Tandberg’s TelePresence video-conferencing system.
The company is turning its attention to the region by forming new partnerships that will boost the level of IT skills in many Latin American countries. The demand for Latin American professionals with Internet skills is forecast to greatly outpace supply, so Cisco is seeking to help Latin America meet that need through technology for cheaper basic communication, education through distance learning and government support systems. Joint initiatives between the Cisco Networking Academy and the governments in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia have created opportunities for 150,000 Academy students. Other countries such as Costa Rica and Chile are also becoming involved with these public-private partnerships.
“I have never in my professional life seen this level of commitment to IT education in this region,” says Jaime Valles, Cisco’s vice president for Latin America. Born in Spain, Valles, 44, has spent 20 years living in Mexico, where he worked for Sun Micro Systems before moving to Miami for Cisco. Valles sat down with PODER to discuss the company’s plans.
[JAIME VALLES] Cisco has a capacity to really improve a country’s competitiveness, the quality of life for citizens in the region. We are convinced that by utilizing technology and specifically broadband, a country can see GDP growth while offering key services to citizens [in areas] such as safety, health, and education and other public services. When you have technology it makes your key players more relevant to the marketplace and governments today realize that. Education is critical for Latin America’s success and technology is a key player in that
Cisco’s message and our mission is appealing to governments in Latin America because we are offering them a better and more competitive way to provide public services.
[PODER HISPANIC] How has Cisco worked itself into this position where it can offer this level of services?
[JV] We have partnerships with the key service providers in each country, with government institutions and a large network of partners that allows us to offer best technology.
[PH] And what’s the main area now of your business? What’s the big growth area for Cisco?
[JV] Right now what we are seeing in the market is a unique moment. I don’t want to get too technical but it’s convergence of the traditional communications world with the traditional computing world, in a model that is offered as a service to the consumer. In computing you have the Cloud concept where you turn on the computer and you have all of the data centers and all of the processing power somewhere providing you a service. The same thing is going to happen in communications. Forget if it’s your normal fixed line telephone or your cell, you as a user will receive a service whatever way you like to receive it.
Cisco is well-positioned because of the investments that Cisco has made in three or four key areas. One is our traditional communications networking that gets you access anywhere. Second is the data center that offers the computing power to process and offer you the services. Third is the collaboration, because at the end what happens is it allows people to interact. We convert them into a single solution so the customer receives the service. That is why our message today is so strong in the marketplace, be- cause we can put everything together, we have the right partner- ships and offer you, as an individual consumer, the service that you require.
[PH] How big is digital divide between the U.S. and Latin America? How are you able to help the region catch up?
[JV] Latin America today has a unique opportunity because what’s happening is there is a lot of focus on the region, and economically it’s a solid region. Latin America doesn’t have the deficit issues that you are seeing in other regions. So the governments right now have financial capabilities to invest in infrastructure, and the governments realize that the infrastructure has to be put in place. The other key is that Internet penetration is so low. In other regions we are talking about 50 percent to 60 percent penetration. In Latin America we are at high single digit penetration. So we have a lot of opportunity to grow. Just to give you a data point, the World Bank estimates that for every 10 points of broadband penetration your GDP growth accelerates 1.3 points.
So what happens is you have the technology available, you realize the importance, you have the opportunity to leapfrog so you can go to the latest Internet-based technology in order to offer that connectivity, including mobile and fixed. You have governments that are realizing the importance of that, so they can address the key issues they have to address including competition, regulation, investment etc. And then you have a company like Cisco that offers you a fully integrated solution with the partners and with financing.
[PH] So if you had to rank the countries in Latin America, which would you put at the top in terms of understanding that message and pursuing it for the betterment of their citizens, and who would you put at the bottom?
[JV] It’s hard to answer that question because every country is doing something. Chile has been always a leader in terms of broadband penetration. Brazil has just announced a national broadband plan, and Mexico and Colombia have their own infrastructure plans. So it’s hard to say that any government is better or worse. What we are doing is saying why don’t we help each of them in whatever they require in order to be more successful, because what happens is every country needs something different. In some places it’s education, in some places it’s financing, and in some places it’s access to the technology and the right partnerships.
So, we build a plan for the country. In Mexico, we talked about manufacturing and location. John Chambers, our chairman, went to Mexico two years ago and confirmed a huge $5 billion investment over five years. We have pilot programs in about 40 schools right now in Mexico to improve educational access, graduation rates and teaching standards. We really plan for the country. We ask, ‘What can we do to make this country better?’ And we put forth the people and the resources to make it better.
[PH] What kind of roadblocks do you see in Latin America in terms of resistance to technology? Cuba is obvious. What about Venezuela, which is a fairly well-connected country?
[JV] We don’t get into politics at all. What we do is we realize the importance of technology, independent of any ideology. You know, in Venezuela, we do very good business with Cantv… We believe that Cantv is a great partner for Cisco in order to offer services to the marketplace. So, we have a large team in Venezuela. And we continue investing in Venezuela.
Our vision is to best partner for governments and companies to increase Latin American growth and improve the quality of the citizens. It does not say the country has to be this ideology or the other one. And we have been very good at that and not making [distinctions] at all because we believe you have opportunities everywhere. The market today really represents a huge opportunity. Here are two numbers that I can share because this is a public disclosure we have made. In the last quarter Internet penetration in Brazil grew [year to year] 80 percent, and Mexico 63 percent.
So, you have solid growth and solid opportunities all across the region. What we are convinced is that the growth in the region by leveraging technology could be key in order to make the region more successful. Internet traffic in Latin America will grow 51 percent compounded over the next four or five years. It is the fastest growing traffic region in the world. And Cisco is the leading company in Internet technologies. We have a strong presence obviously, and a huge opportunity to grow.
RESULTS OF MENENDEZ’S MAJOR FORTUNE 500 DIVERSITY SURVEY: REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN AND MINORITIES ON CORPORATE BOARDS STILL LAGS FAR BEHIND NATIONAL POPULATION.
Minorities represent 14.5% of corporate boards; women 18%
One of most successful corporate diversity surveys ever — 219 of Fortune 500 responded; 71 of Fortune 100
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Chairman of the Senate Democratic Task Force and the lone Hispanic Senator, today unveiled the results of his survey on women and minority representation among the senior management of Fortune 500 companies, as well as their use of minority and women-owned businesses in the contracting and procurement process. The survey found that women and minority representation on corporate boards continues to lag far behind the national population percentages. Menendez’s survey was one of the most successful of its kind, garnering input from 219 corporations on the Fortune 500 list and 71 on the Fortune 100 list.
The study found minorities to represent a total of 14.5% of directors on corporate boards and overall have less representation on executive teams than they do on corporate boards. Hispanics are least proportionately represented on boards and fared even worse on executive teams. They comprise 3.28% of board members and and 2.90% on executive teams, about one-fifth of the 15% they represent in the U.S. population. Among minority groups, African Americans have the highest representation on boards compared to their population, but saw greatest decline in representation from boards to executive management teams, from 8.77% to 4.23%. Women on the other hand fared better on executive teams than on corporate boards, with 18.04% and 19.87% of representation respectively, but these figures still represent less than one-half of their proportion of the national population.
Senator Menendez and others also offered concrete recommendations, including the creation of a task force with select corporations, executive search firms, board members, and other experts to help companies move in this direction.
“As Chair of the Senate Democratic Hispanic Task Force, one of my top priorities has always been promoting and expanding diversity at all levels of our economic, political and social sectors, and the basic understanding that has resulted from this survey will help guide us in doing so,” said Senator Menendez. “This report clearly confirms what we had suspected all along – that American corporations need to do better when it comes to having the board rooms on Wall Street reflect the reality on Main Street. We need to change the dynamic and make it commonplace for minorities to be part of the American corporate structure. It is not just about doing what’s right, but it’s a good business decision that will benefit both corporations and the communities they’re tapping into and making investments in. That’s why I’m offering my recommendations and to work one-on-one with companies who want to move those numbers and company executives who want to make a difference in the community.”
“At the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC) as an organization that represents more than 200 local Hispanic Chambers across the United States, and speaks for 3 million small and minority-owned businesses throughout the nation, we believe that embracing diversity is not just the right thing to do, but is a smart business decision. To us, diversity is not an abstract concept – we measure success by the qualified Hispanic employees hired, developed, advanced and flourishing with their corporate employers and we applaud Senator Menendez’s leadership in holding corporate America accountable to their commitments to diversity.” Said Javier Palomarez, President & CEO of the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “A diverse workforce is critical to providing the best service to our global clients, supporting our business initiatives and creating a workplace environment that promotes respect and fairness,” said Jose Manuel Souto, Chief Financial Officer for Visa in Latin America.
“Our country is very rich in diversity, and our economic progress resides largely in our ability to harness that diversity. In our industry we experience first hand the enormous amount of untapped investment talent, thirsty for opportunities to prove to institutional investors its ability to compete and deliver. We commend Sen Menendez for his vision and leadership, and invite corporate America to see these efforts as an opportunity to find new competitive advantages. By exploring the utilization of fresh and capable diverse talent Corporate America wins and our country’s economic progress accelerates.” Said Monika Mantilla, President & CEO of Altura Capital, and New America Alliance Board Member.
“Ethnic diversity on public company boards is ultimately good business. When 40% or more of your customers in America are going to be minorities, companies, to be competitive, need the insights and expertise of Board members who understand how to market to those segments. Senator Menendez is to be commended for making this issue one of public discussion and dialogue.” Said Roel Campos, former SEC Commissioner and Board member of the New America Alliance.
This survey is one of the largest studies of women and minority diversity among corporate leadership with one of the highest response rates. A total of 219 Fortune 500 companies participated, including 71 Fortune 100 companies, making this one of the largest surveys on women and minority representation in corporate leadership ever. It requested the following information from corporations: 1) whether or not they have written diversity plans with targets, 2) data on diversity at the Board and executive management level, and 3) information on supplier diversity.
-Women represent 18.04% of Directors; 1 out of every 5 Board members is female. The proportional representation of women on Boards is less than one-half of their proportion to the overall U.S. population.
-Minorities represent 14.45% of Directors; 1 out of every 7 Board members is a minority. Minorities represent less than half of the 35% of the population they comprise overall in this country.
-Blacks/African Americans have the highest representation at 8.77% compared to their population, reporting a Board ratio of about 69%.
-Hispanics have one of the poorest representations on Boards. They comprise about 3.28% of Board members, one-fifth of the 15% they represent in the U.S. population.
Native Americans made up about .04% of Board members, approximately 5% of their actual population.
Diversity on Executive Teams (CEO and direct reports)
-Women represent 19.87 percent of Directors; 1 out of every 5 Board members is female. Although women fared slightly better on executive teams than on corporate Boards, they still represent less than one-half of their population.
-Minorities overall have less representation on executive teams than they do on corporate Boards, representing 10.44% of executive managers, compared to 30% of their actual proportion to the U.S. population.
-Blacks/African Americans saw the greatest decline in representation from Boards to executive management teams, 8.77% to 4.23%. In fact, they went from about one out of every 11 Board members to one out of every 24 executive team members. When compared to population statistics, Blacks/African Americans on executive boards represented only about one-third of their U.S. population.
-Hispanics/Latinos fare worse on executive teams versus corporate Boards at 2.90%, Asians and Native Americans do slightly better at 2.55% and .25% respectively.
Supplier Diversity
Only 98 corporations (less than half of respondents) provided some form of data on supplier diversity, whether it was by racial/ethnic category or just overall procurement with Minority Business Enterprises (MBEs). 118 corporations either chose not to answer the question or said they do not track this data at all.
Of the data collected:
·Hispanic/Latino-owned firms represent 2.69% of total procurement.
·Black/African American-owned firms represent 2.58% of total procurement.
·Asian-owned firms represent 3.21% of total procurement.
·Native American-owned firms represent 0.83% of total procurement.
·Other minority-owned firms represent 3.31% of total procurement
RECOMMENDATIONS
The following are recommendations that corporations can implement today if they are serious about improving diversity at the top:
ØDevelop Relationships with Expert Organizations Outside of Traditional Networks. Nominating committees should never use the excuse that they cannot find a qualified minority or a woman to nominate to their Board. This was actually a common response over the course of this survey. There are numerous organizations that may be outside of the traditional network but have extensive contacts, resources and expertise in different communities and know who the right people are. Those organizations should be engaged to the fullest extent.
ØDo Not Recruit Solely at the Ivy League Schools. Expanding recruitment from Ivy League schools to other top schools can be another way to get qualified diverse candidates into the corporate pipeline. Also, developing relationships with professional organizations that can help identify qualified people through their memberships.
ØUtilize Executive Search Firms with Expertise in Diverse Communities or Require Them to Seriously Consider Diversity. The survey showed that a discussion of diversity when using executive search firms did not necessarily correlate with improved diversity. Therefore, steps should be taken beyond just a simple discussion. All search firms should be obligated to look for and provide companies with diverse, qualified candidates rather than simply pulling from traditional pools of candidates. For example, diverse candidates who have experience running large non-profits or government agencies should not be ruled out, especially if their issue expertise aligns with the company mission. A search firm should be able to provide detailed information on what they are doing proactively to recruit diverse candidates. In addition, search firms that have unique expertise with diverse communities should be recruited to help identify candidates for Board and executive management positions. Insight into diverse communities can create a lot of business for a search firm that is effective in a niche space.
ØInterview at Least One Diverse Candidate When Filling Board or Leadership Positions. Similar to the National Football League’s self-imposed “Rooney Rule,” where at least one minority candidate is interviewed for head coaching and senior football operations opportunities, nominating committees, CEOs and Human Resources personnel should aim to interview at least one minority candidate when looking to fill leadership positions. These interviews should be done in a serious and meaningful manner, not simply to check a box.
ØLink Success with Diversity to Bonuses. Corporations should link diversity among each business department to the bonuses and annual performance reviews of business leaders. The survey found that corporations that do this tend to have better diversity among their workforce and among the top leadership.
ØHire Chief Diversity Officers from Diverse Communities. It is crucial that diversity chiefs at a company come from the communities they are recruiting from and working with. These individuals are more likely to have ties to the communities they represent and can use those relationships to recruit diverse candidates for positions at all levels.
ØHold More than Human Resources and Chief Diversity Officer Accountable for Diversity. Diversity should be a goal in every aspect of a company’s operations not only in the areas of procurement, Board and senior management levels, but also in a company’s treasury office where financial oversight lies. Diversity should be considered among brokerage fees that extend to professional services like legal fees, mergers and acquisitions, pension fund management, and other services. Many times the budget for these types of services significantly exceeds that for suppliers. These areas should be part of a corporation’s diversity plan. While this particular survey did not ask questions related to brokerage fees and professional services, the next one will.
ØCreate External Advisory Councils to Assist with Diversity. Forming an external advisory council to focus on diversity is a good step to developing relationships within specific communities and identifying potential candidates for positions. These Councils should not be formed only when there is a crisis. There should be a separate council for each diverse group, i.e. women, Asians, etc, and each should report to the CEO. These councils should be composed of outside community leaders that do work and have extensive networks with these communities.
ØBe Clear on the Difference Between U.S. Employees and Foreign Employees When Filling Directorships and Other Leadership Positions. Although this survey did not ask corporations to differentiate between U.S. and foreign employees, future surveys will. Foreign Nationals should be considered separately from the levels of diversity for U.S. employees.
ØGroom Senior Employees for Top Positions. It is critical that corporations implement meaningful succession planning, whether in the form of a mentoring program or other similar mechanism, for senior employees of a company who can be groomed for top leadership positions in the future. Such a program should require a significant time investment from the CEO and his or her leadership team. These programs help identify people who not only could be future leaders of the company, but could be tapped for Director positions on other corporate Boards.
ØTrack Supplier Diversity So It Becomes a Priority. The lack of data shared regarding diverse suppliers, specifically in terms of a breakdown by ethnic/racial category, proves that this is an area that needs work. According to the latest census figures, there are more than 7.8 million women-owned businesses and 5.8 million minority-owned businesses. It is important to make an effort to procure with diverse suppliers and track this progress over time. If a corporation does not know where it stands, it cannot take action to improve.
ØPhilanthropy is Good, but Not Enough. This survey showed two things, among others: that there is much philanthropy, but less diversity. Although philanthropy is good and should be part of a corporation’s diversity plan, philanthropy alone is simply not enough. Diversity at all levels should be made a priority not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it is a good business decision.
ØOpportunities for Board Diversity When Companies Go Public. Some companies have been bought by private equity firms that will take them public very soon. In the process, companies will have to rename an entirely new Board of Directors. This provides a prime opportunity to seek the most diverse, qualified candidates for Director positions and can have the quickest impact on improving Board diversity. Corporations that fall into this category will be watched closely over the coming year.
ØDo Not Rely Solely on Written Diversity Plans. While corporations with written plans are more likely to have better diversity among their leadership as well as with suppliers, the gains were only slight. Therefore, corporations should not rely solely on written diversity plans, but should also implement more far-reaching changes that can have an even greater impact. Implementing some of the aforementioned recommendations should provide corporations a good step in the right direction.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, commonly known as the stimulus law, has a host of tight deadlines for its myriad health information technology subsidy and IT network development initiatives.
Nearly all of them are timed to help fulfill the ambitious goal set by former President George W. Bush in 2004 and adopted by President Barack Obama last year to make electronic health records available to most Americans by 2014.
Not surprisingly, a federally funded health IT workforce training effort is both part of the overall program and caught up in its mad rush.
“We are moving fast,” said Patricia Dombrowski, director of the Life Science Informatics Center at Bellevue (Wash.) College, which is leading a consortium of community colleges that applied for and won $3.4 million in workforce training grants funded by the stimulus law—covering career paths from information management to IT hardware installation.
Preparations at the college are moving so fast, “We were talking about using roller skates this morning, but we raised our hands,” Dombrowski said. “We knew the time line, so I really feel confident moving forward.”
Last month, HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology awarded $112 million of stimulus funds to dozens of universities and community colleges such as Bellevue for various IT workforce training and advanced-education programs ranging from six-month certificates through post-graduate degrees.
The faculties and administrators at those schools will be preparing feverishly for the fall semester and the first influx of what they hope will be thousands of new health IT students and job seekers.
Feeling the need
Boosting employment nationwide was a major goal of the stimulus law, and there is little doubt, according to the government and industry leaders, that tens of thousands of new jobs will be needed if the federal effort to push provider adoption of EHRs is to be successful.
Under the stimulus law, both physicians and hospitals seeking subsidy payments for their IT purchases must use certified EHRs in a meaningful manner. Last December, the ONC and CMS issued rules for certification and meaningful use. In response to thousands of subsequent public comments, both rules are likely to be modified sometime this spring.
The National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates there are 308,900 office-based physicians who are not federal employees, who are not working for a hospital’s ambulatory-care program, and who are not radiologists, anesthesiologists or pathologists.
Almost half of these doctors are either in solo practice or work in partnership with just one other physician. According to the latest NCHS data available—the 2009 estimates from its National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey—only 21% of these office-based physicians have a “basic” EHR.
By NCHS definition, a basic system has rudimentary capabilities, including the ability to create patient problem lists and clinical notes and do electronic prescribing. Although it’s not part of the definition, a basic system most likely lacks sufficient functionality to be certified under ONC rules and thus be considered to be an EHR system worthy of reimbursement under the multibillion-dollar stimulus technology subsidy program that is dominating the health IT landscape.
Just 6% of all office-based physicians use what the NCHS defines as a “fully functional” EHR. Such a system might have enough bells and whistles—such as automatic warnings of drug interactions and out-of-range test levels—that a physician using one might reasonably expect to qualify for federal EHR subsidy payments under the stimulus law, based on current drafts of ONC and CMS rules.
But even these advanced EHR systems are likely to require vendor upgrades to meet proposed ONC certification criteria, while many clinicians will still be expected to change their workflows and reporting requirements to fully qualify for EHR subsidy payments under proposed CMS meaningful-use standards.
On average, hospitals are a bit higher up the IT adoption curve than physician offices, but most hospitals are still a long way from where they’ll need to be to achieve meaningful use under the proposed CMS criteria.
Computerized physician order entry is an advanced EHR function in hospitals. According to the CMS proposed rule, to qualify for federal EHR subsidy payments under the Medicare portion of the stimulus law, hospitals must run 10% of their orders through a CPOE system for a 90-day period sometime during the first year of the program, which starts this fall.
Jason Hess, general manager of clinical research at KLAS Enterprises, Orem, Utah, a health IT market research firm, said its latest survey data, validated between October 2009 and February 2010, show only about 16% of hospitals have CPOE systems up and running.
“And if you look at those that are doing 50% of their orders or more through CPOE, it’s 11.3%,” Hess said.
Given the low levels of adoption and use, Hess asked whether it is even “realistic” for the CMS to require that all hospitals have CPOE installed in the first year and “get 10% of orders through CPOE.”
Talk of a looming labor shortage problem is on a lot of IT buyers’ lips, Hess said. Some of the vendors are trying to address the problem by offering remote hosting services for their products, he said, but it remains to be seen whether the software-as-a-service delivery model will catch on fast enough and be used widely enough to make a dent in the workforce shortfall.
Small, rural and community hospitals will feel the stress most severely.
“It’s kind of the Wild West for these folks who say we’ve got to do all the things the big hospitals do,” Hess said.
Help wanted
For starters, thousands of workers will be needed to simply install these EHR systems, configure them to local needs and train clinicians and other healthcare workers in their use. Thousands more will be needed to keep them running and to squeeze the data from them to improve patient safety and quality of care and warrant the multibillion-dollar public investment in them.
Leaders of organizations representing the nation’s office-based physicians and hospitals are concerned their members might not be able do all that will be needed to qualify for EHR subsidies under current ONC and CMS rules, given the gap between their current IT adoption status and the high bar set for them in the December drafts.
On May 3, the American Medical Association, American Hospital Association and Federation of American Hospitals as well as a host of medical specialty societies sent a joint letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, calling for the government to dial back its proposed meaningful-use criteria as well as give them more time to meet its performance targets.
For both physicians and hospitals, time is money. The first “payment year” begins Oct. 1 under the Medicare portion of the EHR subsidy program, through which the bulk of the estimated $14 billion to $27 billion in federal IT reimbursements under the stimulus law is expected to flow.
The healthcare industry has not been caught unawares of an IT labor force shortage, even though the advent of such massive amounts of federal EHR subsidy payments have added a heightened sense of urgency.
Back in 2005, the American Health Information Management Association and American Medical Informatics Association formed a joint committee to try and gin up support for education and training in heath informatics and health information management.
They produced a report, Building the Work Force for Health Information Transformation in 2006. In a case of “be careful what you wish for,” one of that group’s specific recommendations was to seek federal legislation and support for healthcare IT adoption and funding for IT education and training.
The stimulus law, with its buckets of money for EHR subsidies and education was all that, but with tight timelines as a kicker.
What eventually flowed from the AHIMA/AMIA joint effort was a report released in 2008 laying down what the two groups concluded are the core competencies of professionals working with EHRs.
In addition, AMIA is leading an effort to create a board certification program for physicians in medical informatics with the first credentials being awarded in 2013.
AHIMA, meanwhile, supported the design and rollout of the Virtual Lab for EHRs that provides Web-based coursework to more than 125 associate, baccalaureate and post-graduate health information management, or HIM, degree programs.
The latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics pegged the medical records and health IT workforce in 2008 at about 173,000. About two in five HIM/HIT workers were employed by hospitals, with the rest scattered across physician offices, nursing homes, home health services and other outpatient centers.
Despite the current U.S. unemployment rate hovering just under 10%, the highest figures since 1983, job prospects for health IT workers “should be very good, particularly for technicians with strong computer skills” who will be “in particularly high demand,” according to a BLS report. The healthcare industry, it projected, will need another 35,000 of these positions by 2018, a 20% increase.
Dombrowski
Part two of a two-part series
Along with the push to ramp up the use of health information technology in hospitals and doctors’ offices comes the need for a highly skilled labor force to get the job done.
Claire Dixon-Lee is executive director of the Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education; the CAHIIM is a division of the American Health Information Management Association that accredits 281 health information management certificate and baccalaureate degree programs at schools across the country. In the past, health information management workers dealt with managing paper records, but their jobs have changed with the times.
Dixon-Lee said that today many AHIMA members are doing the work of IT specialists at their hospitals and physician offices while others can be retrained for these new positions. CAHIIM-accredited programs graduate between 3,000 and 3,500 students a year, of which 600 receive bachelor’s degrees and the rest associate’s degrees, she said.
“Our data show a 95% placement rate, but we aren’t producing them fast enough,” said Dixon-Lee, who cited a 2009 private workforce study commissioned by AHIMA last year projecting the need for anywhere between 12,000 and 50,000 new health information professionals over the next eight years.
Many Modern Healthcare readers who participated in our most recent annual IT survey reported having a tough time recruiting and retaining IT staff. A majority of survey respondents (58%) indicated they’ll need to hire more IT staff in the next 12 months. Meanwhile, 49% of responding executives said they have a hard time hiring or retaining IT workers, most commonly, because of a scarcity of trained personnel, but also because of low wages for IT workers in healthcare compared with other industries.
Officials at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology think the demand for workers skilled in health IT will be even greater than the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests, but perhaps near the upper end of the numbers that Dixon-Lee cited.
“In the aggregate, we have estimated to get to meaningful use by almost all care venues in the country we’re going to need something like 50,000 more trained healthcare workers in these roles than the educational system as it currently exists can produce,” said Charles Friedman, chief scientific officer for the ONC and its point man on ONC-funded educational and workforce development programs. The goal is to have 10,500 new healthcare IT workers trained each year over five years.
“We believe most of the people who can benefit from this program will come into it already possessing part of what they will need to know,” Friedman said. “They will be either IT people who will need to know more about health, or health people who will need to know more about IT. I can’t say what the balance between those two is.”
Friedman said the ONC picked the six “career paths” that the community colleges will train students to take. Those jobs are: clinician/practitioner consultants; implementation managers; implementation support specialists; practice workflow and information management redesign specialists; technical/software support staffers; and trainers.
“We looked at the field as it was evolving, not as it is today, but as we expect it to evolve,” Friedman said. ONC staffers looked at all the activities under the stimulus law and the low EHR adoption rate “and said, OK, what’s going to be necessary to get these practices from paper to electronic, and what roles are needed,” and what is needed to do it properly?
Under the ONC-supported, six-month certificate programs, U.S. community colleges are expected to train 10,500 students a year over five years. For those programs, there will be no certification organization required to look over the shoulder of the 70 community colleges expected to churn out those graduates.
“It’s a bit early to be contemplating that,” Friedman said.
Instead, Friedman said, the ONC has awarded a $6 million grant to Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale, to create and administer a competency examination for graduates of the community college training programs. AHIMA is “very much involved” in the grant, Friedman said.
The individual competency testing program was chosen as an alternative to certification, Friedman said, “to make it very clear this grant award is to assess objectively a certain set of competencies in each examinee who sits for the exam.
“This could evolve in the future into some kind of certification program,” he said.
Community college graduates of the six-month certificate programs won’t be required to sit for the competency exam, “but we hope they will,” Friedman said. Part of the money for the competency testing grant is to underwrite the cost of 20,000 students to sit for the exam for free, he said. “We’re considering this as a pump-priming mechanism to ensure enough sit for the exam to demonstrate its value.”
For the new student certificate holders, “We think it will improve their job prospects. Think of how colleges use the SAT exam to complement a student’s grades to enhance admission. I think in the same way, this exam will be a comparable assessment of a certain set of competencies,” Friedman said.
“For a prospective employer, it will be information above and beyond” the educational program, Friedman said. Data on pass-fail rates from the competency exams could be aggregated and reported back to the community colleges to help them assess their programs, he added.
Back to school
Bill Hersh is a physician and chairman of the medical informatics and clinical epidemiology department at Oregon Health & Science University and a man on the hustle.
The university was a triple winner in the federal workforce grant competition, receiving a total of $5.8 million in funding for three programs—nearly $3.1 million for advanced training to medical professionals in healthcare informatics; more than $1.8 million to develop curricula to be used by community colleges to train healthcare IT workers; and $900,000 to serve as the National Training and Dissemination Center for the curriculum-development program.
Oregon Health & Science has an established, nationally recognized medical informatics program. At any given time, Hersh said, the university may have as many as 200 people enrolled in its postgraduate, 24-credit-hour certificate program and its 52-credit-hour, master’s degree in biomedical informatics program.
About two-thirds of the current enrollment in those programs consists of clinical professionals—with half of that group being physicians—and the remaining third being computer people, Hersh said.
The federal, advanced-education grants will be for scholarships to those programs, Hersh said, with the caveat being that enrollees in the federally funded graduate certificate programs must complete their work in 12 months, whereas in the past, a typical enrollee, who works and goes to school at the same time, often takes longer to complete the same course.
“If they do our graduate certificate program, they have to do it all in a year,” Hersh said, but the trade-off for the rush is, “in essence, people can get a free education.” Tuition for the certificate program is about $12,000. “We have 45 slots per year,” Hersh says. “The people who don’t get funded can still do the program.” It just won’t be subsidized, he added.
Aid recipients under this one-year, advanced educational grant program also must choose from six career paths: clinician/public health leader; health information management and exchange specialist; health information privacy and security specialist; research and development scientist; programmers and software engineers; and health IT subspecialist.
In addition to Oregon Health & Science, eight other universities will share in a total of $32 million in stimulus law funding for university-based, advanced IT education programs. They are: Columbia University; the University of Colorado at Denver’s College of Nursing; Duke University; George Washington University; Indiana University; Johns Hopkins University; the University of Minnesota; and Texas State University, San Marcos.
Along with its graduate-level programs, Oregon Health & Science, as part of its triple-win, will join Columbia, Duke and Johns Hopkins as well as the University of Alabama at Birmingham in sharing ONC grants totaling $10 million to develop curricula to support the six-month, community college IT certificate programs.
The new curricula will cover 20 different content categories, including history of health IT, installation and maintenance of health IT systems, project management, and the use of IT in quality improvement.
“The people who got funded were all experts in informatics who have been doing this kind of instruction,” Hersh said, although none of them has ever developed curricula for community colleges.
To make up for lack of community college experience, each of the contracting universities was obliged to enlist “a suitable number of community college partners,” Hersh said. “In my center, there are four community colleges partners. There are faculty that will work with us as subject-matter experts that will come up with curricula suitable for the community college setting.”
Work on curriculum development by the five universities and their community college partners began almost immediately after the grants were awarded in early April, Hersh said.
The schools have less than four months to complete their curriculum development work before Oregon Health & Science welcomes 400 community college educators to Portland in August for a crash course in the new IT training program outlines.
“It will be a pretty intensive week late that month,” Hersh said. After that, the newly trained faculty will return home and get ready for a hoped-for influx of new IT students. By the end of September, the entire first wave of new IT students is expected to be enrolled.
The participating 70 community colleges will form five consortia, each geographically dispersed, although not every state will have a participating community college. The five consortia will each be led by one community college—Bellevue (Wash.) College; Los Rios Community College, Sacramento, Calif.; Cuyahoga Community College, Cleveland; Pitt Community College, Greenville, N.C., and Tidewater Community College, Norfolk, Va. Grants awarded to these schools could total $70 million over the next two years—$36 million this year and up to $34 million the next.
At Bellevue College, administrators years ago foresaw the looming demand for health IT workers and began developing training programs to meet the industry’s needs. Patricia Dombrowski, director of the school’s life-science informatics center, said the college has graduated about 17 health IT workers a year over the past six years from its 12-month, 30-credit-hour health IT training program.
In 2008, as doldrums beset the Puget Sound IT job market, the college responded by creating a six-month program aimed at providing experienced IT workers from other industries with a background in healthcare IT. The 18-credit-hour program for these IT veterans opened this January with students to spare.
“We could have probably seated 50 or more, but we limited it to 25,” Dombrowski said.
In addition, Bellevue this summer will offer a three-month program for incumbent physician-office practice managers on IT project management and EHR support, she said. “Now we’re ready to scale up” for the HHS-funded training program, Dombrowski said.
Community colleges are not obligated to use the curricula developed by Oregon Health & Science and the other four universities, but all must focus their training programs on the six federally designated career paths. Although no single school is required to offer courses on all six job targets, each consortium must see that all six are covered within their group.
“I doubt we’ll do all six,” Dombrowski said. “We have to see a little more about the curriculum before we make a decision about that.”
Bellevue could get by with just some tweaks to its existing courses and curricula to adapt them to the federal program, Dombrowski said.
“We think we’re spot on and at the very worst, very close, but we have not seen the standard, and we’ve made some suggestions about the ONC accepting the existing curriculum,” she said. If required, “We stand ready to implement the national curricula.”
Bellevue will receive $1 million from the ONC grant to oversee its consortium, which includes seven other community colleges. Each community college, including Bellevue, will receive the same $625,000 in federal grant money to run its training programs and other services. Bellevue’s additional $375,000 will go to administer the consortium.
Beyond providing teachers and course materials, Dombrowski said, Bellevue will offer tutoring and counseling and employment services. The amount of money the ONC is providing “seems adequate to the task,” she added.
Will there be enough time to develop and disseminate the curricula, train educators and be ready for the first day of school by September?
Dombrowski thinks so.
“It’s wonderful in these tough times for people to be able to draw a direct line from training to be put to work,” she said. “The beauty of this is it’s so directly related to people who need work.”
New York, N.Y. – Today Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association (LISTA) President and CEO, Jose Marquez-Leon released the following statement in response to the May 24, 2010 letter to the Federal Communications Commission on the importance of broadband adoption and deployment over regulation.
LISTA is pleased to see 74 members of Congress join together and speak with one voice on the importance of broadband technology to transform the communities where we live and work. Broadband technology can revitalize the Hispanic community – providing access to first class schools and job training for high-paying American jobs.
Members of Congress have shown the Federal Communications Commission the importance of broadband – and the importance of focusing on policy goals before implementing net neutrality rules that threaten delay and deter broadband investment. We simply can not afford to keep high-speed Internet out of reach from the communities with schools and businesses that need to be online.
Congress has shown the Commission that there is much work to be done to bring broadband to all of America – I hope they will take the leadership to promote access and adoption with sensible policies that encourage investment, innovation, and collaboration.
Washington, DC [CapitalWirePR] May 24, 2010 – Recently, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) treated Puerto Rico and its elected representatives with disregard and disrespect. It held that Puerto Ricans don’t deserve the same quality of access to telecommunications services that other Americans enjoy. This is wrong and this must be reversed.
Congress created the FCC for the express purpose of ensuring that “all the people of the United States” have comparable access to telecommunications services “without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex.” In furtherance of this fundamental right, Congress directed the FCC to provide funding to ensure universal access to communications services. And Congress specifically required the FCC to provide the financial support necessary to ensure that equal quality telecommunications services in “insular areas,” like Puerto Rico, are both available and affordable.
The FCC, however, turned its back on this duty and the Commonwealth. The FCC decided not to provide the funding necessary to ensure Puerto Rico has equal quality universal telephone service. Instead, the Commission said that having affordable wire line telephone service isn’t important in Puerto Rico because, in the FCC’s view, we can make do with cell phone service. What the FCC did not say is that this is a double standard that discriminates against Puerto Rico because the FCC’s policies on the mainland have ensured affordable access to both wire line and wireless services.
At bottom, we have a real need for the support Congress directed the FCC to provide. Despite the advances seen in other parts of the country, many in Puerto Rico still lack access to basic telephone and Internet services. In fact, Puerto Rico has the largest population of persons who lack access to any wire line telecommunications service—a staggeringly high 200,000 individuals and approximately 200 communities. Moreover, many of these same communities lack access to wireless telecommunications due to weak coverage in the inland mountains.
Had the FCC followed Congress’s direction, Puerto Ricans would be assured of the affordable access to equal quality telecommunications they are entitled to. And we are not just talking about voice services. Before the FCC made its decision, the Puerto Rico Telephone Company offered a commitment to use these funds to deploy voice and broadband-capable infrastructure. This would not only have ensured access to wired telephone service, it would have provided a running start toward efforts to bring broadband to more of the citizens of the Commonwealth.
On the same day that the FCC turned its back on the people of Puerto Rico, it granted a substantial increase in financial support to wire line systems in Wyoming—despite the fact that Puerto Rico has seven times the population of Wyoming and 40 percent of Puerto Rico’s population is living below the poverty line. For those of us who want to ascribe a neutral, objective basis to the FCC’s decision-making, this decision simply makes no sense.
It is time to let the FCC know that it can no longer relegate Puerto Ricans to steerage while the rest of the United States goes first class. Thankfully, the fight is not over and we are not alone. Representatives in Washington—including Resident Commissioner Pedro R. Pierluisi, Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, and Representative José E. Serrano—have been working hard to urge the FCC to treat Puerto Ricans fairly, as federal law requires. The FCC’s decision to ignore these requests reveals a profound disrespect not only for those living in Puerto Rico but for these representatives as well. We must urge them to continue to fight for us and support them in the coming days as they tell the FCC to do its job and reverse its discriminatory decision.
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The author is President and CEO of the National Puerto Rican Coalition, Inc., a nonpartisan, non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., whose mission is to strengthen and enhance the social, political, and economic well-being of Puerto Ricans throughout the U.S and Puerto Rico, with a special focus on the most vulnerable.
Harry C. Alford
Jim Crow in Silicon Valley is Exposed
This is the age of high technology. IT companies are leading the way in job growth and high paying jobs as the world conducts business at the speed of light. No place else in the world focuses so intently on the industry than the Silicon Valley in the Palo Alto and San Jose areas of California. California has a minority population of 52 percent, and logic would dictate that this locale would provide opportunities for Blacks and Hispanics. However, the San Jose Mercury News reports that is not the case.
The information technology business ranks as the most segregated and discriminatory industries in the U.S. The hiring practices by companies like Google, Apple, Yahoo, Oracle, Applied Materials, Hewlett Packard, Cisco and others act more like the Ku Klux Klan than good corporate citizens. This is easy to do when traditional civil rights groups give you a pass as long as you provide sponsorship money for their fundraising events. Some groups even join with these culprits on advocacy and legislative issues as if these bastions of racism are examples of good inclusive governance. This is damaging and has caused these companies to avoid public scrutiny until now.
The Mercury News used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain hiring data as recently as 2005 from the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCCP), which tracks hiring practices under Executive Order 11246. Every two years major corporations are audited for their racial and gender demographics at all levels.
The Mercury News attempted to obtain 2008 hiring data but companies that include Google, Apple, Yahoo, Oracle and Applied Materials have blocked access using the court system. Ten companies have been investigated and findings indicate that collectively, only 2.1 percent of the workforce is Black while only 5.2 percent of the workforce is Hispanic.
The Mercury News reported, “Of the 5,907 top managers and officials in the Silicon Valley offices of the 10 large companies in 2005, 296 were Black or Hispanic, a 20 percent decline from 2000, according to U.S. Department of Labor work-force data obtained by the Mercury News through the Freedom of Information request.”
“In 2008, the share of computer workers living in Silicon Valley who are Black or [Hispanic] was 1.5 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively shares that had declined since 2000. Nationally, Blacks and [Hispanic] were 7.1 percent and 5.3 percent of computer workers, respectively, shares that were up since 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The share of managers and top officials who are female at those 10 big Silicon Valley firms slipped to 26 percent in 2005, from 28 percent in 2000.”
This isn’t progress but a reversal of our gains during the civil rights struggle. What these racial culprits are doing should be punished by the U.S. Justice Department. It is blatant discrimination and must be stopped. Now that it is exposed, we must apply serious pressure to end these discriminatory practices. What they think they can do is import a massive amount of Asians via H-1B visas and count them in their collective minority numbers. First of all, only U.S. citizens can be counted in these numbers and all groups, especially Black and Hispanic, must not be under represented. It violates law and should prohibit these corporations from doing business with the federal government or any other entity that receives federal funding or benefits from a federal program or regulation.
The NAACP, Urban League and La Raza should stop accepting money from these bigot corporations. They should be protesting and suing them in the courts. If they dont, I guess the National Black Chamber of Commerce will have to go after them like we did the telecommunications and auto industries with success back in the 1990s. It is not exactly our mission but someone has to do it. Remember, there are reasons why we have triple the unemployment of the national average. This is one of them and no one is going to change the situation but us.
We sometimes “sleep” with the enemy instead of fighting back. As Frederick Douglass taught us long ago, Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and never will.
Wake up people they are trying to ruin us and destroy our children. This is not the time to be nice. WI
Harry Alford is the co-founder, president and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce®. Website:www.nationalbcc.org. Email: halford@nationalbcc.org.
Since the inception of the modern healthcare industry after WWII, the U.S. has been plagued with a daunting amount of wasteful spending related to healthcare.
For the first time, the technology has come of age that truly allows us to change that reality and to take back those wasted healthcare dollars and redeploy them towards real benefits. These benefits will take the form of better healthcare services, a reduction in annual health insurance premium increases and broader coverage of healthcare benefits for our citizens.
At CareCloud, we are continually building systems to eliminate this administrative waste and enhance healthcare providers’ ability to deliver great care. We have assembled a team of the finest and most passionate technologists and designers. These individuals have come together with a mission to build the most powerful infrastructure ever created for the healthcare system while delivering the best business software applications over that infrastructure.
As large an industry as healthcare is, there is a shocking shortage of well-built software applications to serve its needs. Most software was written using software development tools and technologies created in the 1990’s, essentially the infancy of the Internet. Software applications and tools from that era provide a very poor user experience compared to the tools of today.
CareCloud is working 100% untethered. We have an unwavering focus on human-centered design for our products and are utilizing the most modern tools and technologies available to provide the richest user experience possible. The Internet is now a truly ubiquitous platform whereby essentially all of healthcare’s key constituents participate. We are leveraging the power of the Open Source Community to harness the collective brainpower of the Internet and even delivering our systems on the latest platforms such as the iPhone. In this manner we are always available to our customers wherever they are and at any time. CareCloud is not concerned with whether a customer has a Windows PC or a Mac as our systems work on any platform and on any browser. Our information is available all the time and anywhere using essentially any device.
The pace of technological change increases exponentially. More technology has been developed between 2000 and 2009 than in all of the 20th century. We continue to see far too many companies using rigid and obsolete systems from past eras even today. Our mission is to facilitate bringing the latest and greatest to the forefront of healthcare.
Most importantly, we at CareCloud are “living the dream.” We founded our company during an unprecedented time in the history of our economy. While much of the market was in decline, decreasing R&D spending or simply perishing, we were busy building. Our vision, passion and commitment allowed us to secure the necessary financing, build a team of employee-owners and get to work on the future. We believe that the key to living a meaningful life is to aim high in purpose, doing something you love with great people who share your same values. We consider ourselves lucky to have that reality.
Sincerely,
Albert Santalo
Founder and CEO CareCloud
About CareCloud
CareCloud is a web-based software and services company that modernizes the workflow in a medical practice. Visit CareCloud online at www.carecloud.com or www.twitter.com/carecloud.
It was just two months ago that Federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra (above) both announced the Open Government Directive, the intent of which would be to drive transparency, collaboration (on the state and local level, among others), and cost-saving results. Now comes the launch of version 1.0 of the Open Government Dashboard, a web page that allows the public to track the efficiency of federal agencies in meeting targets for greater transparency.
If you get a chance, check out the site. Here’s a rundown, courtesy of ExecutiveGov, of what you’ll find:
“The website provides color coded evaluations based on five areas. Green means the agency meets expectations, yellow that there is progress towards expectations and red that the agency has failed to meet expectations. The five areas are high-value data, open webpage, data integrity, public consultation and open government plan. The open government plans are not required until April 7, 2010.”
It was just two months ago that Federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra (above) both announced the Open Government Directive, the intent of which would be to drive transparency, collaboration (on the state and local level, among others), and cost-saving results. Now comes the launch of version 1.0 of the Open Government Dashboard, a web page that allows the public to track the efficiency of federal agencies in meeting targets for greater transparency.
If you get a chance, check out the site. Here’s a rundown, courtesy of ExecutiveGov, of what you’ll find:
“The website provides color coded evaluations based on five areas. Green means the agency meets expectations, yellow that there is progress towards expectations and red that the agency has failed to meet expectations. The five areas are high-value data, open webpage, data integrity, public consultation and open government plan. The open government plans are not required until April 7, 2010.”
The world of science and technology is one full of amazing discoveries and fascinating new technologies. It is an ever-changing world in which the players are constantly challenging the limits of knowledge and redefining our future. As new problems arise in our society, scientists work to develop new technologies to solve or prevent those problems. However, the scientific community has many blind spots. Problems and potential solutions escape our minds because of our limited experiences. This is why people from different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives are essential to our scientific and technologic advancement. In my case, as the daughter of migrant farm workers, I am very conscious of the environmental injustice that many Latino farm workers experience. This is why, as a scientist, I am determined to elucidate how the exposure to certain agricultural pesticides predisposes farm workers and their families to some types of cancers, developmental abnormalities, and infertility. Unfortunately, while Hispanics represent over 17 percent of the total U.S. population, only 7.6 percent of bachelor’s degrees awarded in science and technology fields go to Latinos (National Science Foundation: Science and Engineering Statistics. May 2008).
The concerns, perspectives and solutions we can contribute to our own problems will continue to be blind spots of the scientific community unless we become the scientists that care, understand and work to solve the problems afflicting our communities. The good news is that there are many programs such as the McNair Achievement Program, the Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC), and the NASA MUST program that do an excellent job in helping Latino students to successfully complete their education. As Latina women, we represent a minority of a minority in science. As a result, a number of additional grants and scholarships for which we are eligible are waiting for us. Instead of lamenting the disparity of Latinos in science, let’s make history; let’s seize the present opportunities, get as much education as we can get, and be the leaders in science that we can be.
Veronica Gonzalez’s first job in the U.S. was as a hotel housekeeper, but she knew she didn’t want to clean toilets for the rest of her life. She enrolled at Pima Community College, took ESL classes, started working at the college’s biology and chemistry labs and immediately knew she wanted to dedicate her life to science and research. She is a pharmacology and toxicology researcher and about to complete her Ph.D. at the University of Arizona.
This article appears in the March 2010 issue of Latino Perspectives Magazine.
Today, Latinos in Information Science and Technology Association (LISTA), the nation’s leading organization of Latino technology professionals and the Alliance for Digital Equality (ADE), a nonprofit organization that provides broadband solutions and broadband related services to underserved and un-served communities, are excited to announce a partnership to facilitate digital empowerment initiatives.
