October 2015 ■ Journal of Dental Education 1167 Allied Dental Education Recruitment of Dental Hygiene Students from Underrepresented Minority Groups: A National Survey of U.S. Dental Hygiene Programs Jennifer M. Hunter, DDS; Janet S. Kinney, RDH, MS; Marita R. Inglehart, Dr phil habil Abstract: The aims of this study were to assess how U.S. undergraduate dental hygiene programs recruit students, especially students from underrepresented minority (URM) groups, and how the program directors value recruiting those students, how sat- isied they are with their efforts, which practices they use, and which challenges they encounter. Relationships between diversity- related recruitment motivation and satisfaction and the program and recruitment characteristics were also explored. Survey data were collected from 56 of the 287 programs that could be successfully contacted with individual emails to their directors (re- sponse rate: 20%). The majority of responding programs recruited students into their programs by using written materials (91%), websites (91%), on-campus events (77%), and high school visits (52%). However, only 20% had written materials and 13% special events for recruiting students from URM groups. While 75% of the responding program directors considered high grade point averages (GPAs) to be a priority and 85% thought high GPAs were important/very important when recruiting students, only 17% considered it a priority to recruit URM students, and only 35% reported thinking it was important/very important to do so. The more of a priority it was to have a diverse student body and the more important the respondents considered it, the more likely they were to have written URM-speciic recruitment materials (r=0.34; p<0.05/r=0.39; p<0.01). The more the respondents valued ACT scores, the less likely they were to engage in URM-speciic recruitment efforts (r=-0.38; p<0.05/r=-0.34; p<0.05). If the dental hygiene profession is to better relect the racial/ethnic makeup of the U.S. population, dental hygiene programs’ consider- ations and efforts related to the recruitment of URM students need to be reconsidered. Dr. Hunter is a irst-year GPR resident, Bronx Lebanon Hospital Center; Prof. Kinney is Clinical Associate Professor, Research Scientist, and Director of Dental Hygiene Program, Department of Periodontics and Oral Medicine, School of Dentistry, Univer- sity of Michigan; and Dr. Inglehart is Professor, Department of Periodontics and Oral Medicine, School of Dentistry and Adjunct Professor, Department of Psychology, College of Literature, Science, and Arts, University of Michigan. Direct correspondence to Dr. Marita R. Inglehart, Department of Periodontics and Oral Medicine, University of Michigan School of Dentistry, 1011 North University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1078; 734-763-8073; mri@umich.edu. Keywords: dental hygiene, dental hygiene education, allied dental education, access to health care, minority groups, minority health, cultural diversity, underrepresented minority students Submitted for publication 4/6/15; accepted 4/22/15 I n 2000, the irst U.S. surgeon general’s report on oral health drew attention to the fact that certain segments of the population suffer from dispro- portionate amounts of oral disease and face problems when trying to access oral health care services. 1 Patients from underrepresented minority (URM) groups were especially vulnerable to these problems. Increasing the numbers of dental care providers from URM groups is one way to increase access to care for these patients because URM health care profes- sionals have provided signiicantly more services for poor and minority patients than non-minority providers. 2-11 However, a decade ago, the Sullivan report, Missing Persons: Minorities in the Health Professions, noted that individuals from URM groups were clearly underrepresented among both students in health professions schools and health care providers. 5 In U.S. dental hygiene programs, the under- representation of URM students has been well documented over the past decades. Dhir et al. found in their 1998 survey of dental hygiene programs that only 10.5% of students were members of ethnic/ra- cial minorities. 12 When Woolfolk and Price provided an overview of the percentages of black, Hispanic, American Indian, Asian, and white dental hygiene students for academic years 2000-01 to 2009-10, they