Rodríguez et al. BMC Medical Education (2022) 22:703 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03736-6 DATABASE Towards a common lexicon for equity, diversity, and inclusion work in academic medicine José E. Rodríguez 1* , Edgar Figueroa 2 , Kendall M. Campbell 3 , Judy C. Washington 4 , Octavia Amaechi 5 , Tanya Anim 6 , Kari-Claudia Allen 7 , Krys E. Foster 8 , Maia Hightower 1 , Yury Parra 9 , Maria H. Wusu 10 , William A. Smith 11 , Mary Ann Villarreal 1 and Linda H. Pololi 12 Abstract Differential rewarding of work and experience has been a longtime feature of academic medicine, resulting in a series of academic disparities. These disparities have been collectively called a cultural or minority “tax,” and, when considered beyond academic medicine, exist across all departments, colleges, and schools of institutions of higher learning–from health sciences to disciplines located on university campuses outside of medicine and health. A shared language can provide opportunities for those who champion this work to pool resources for larger impacts across the institution. This article aims to catalog the terms used across academic medicine disciplines to establish a common language describing the inequities experienced by Black, Latinx, American Indian/Alaska Native and Native Hawai- ian/Other Pacific Islander, Women, and other underrepresented people as well as queer, disabled, and other histori- cally marginalized or excluded groups. These ideas are specific to academic medicine in the United States, although many can be used in academic medicine in other countries. The terms were selected by a team of experts in equity, diversity, and inclusion, (EDI) who are considered national thought leaders in EDI and collectively have over 100 years of scholarship and experience in this area. Keywords: Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Medical education, Special populations, Underserved populations, Minority faculty © The Author(s) 2022. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativeco mmons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. Background Minority or (minoritized) faculty experiences are well documented in the academic medicine space as well as on the greater health sciences campuses [1–6]. Tese experiences have been collectively called “taxes,” or “taxation” and they are disproportionately felt by under- represented faculty in academic medicine regardless of institution type [1, 6]. Examples of these experiences include: minoritized faculty participating in more unpaid diversity eforts, being the targets of racism, isolation, lack of honest efective mentorship, increased clinical responsibilities when compared to non-minority peers, and being considered for promotion later and less often than their non-minoritized peers. Tese taxes are also described as a subsidy for non-underrepresented faculty in academic medicine or a “majority subsidy” [1]. With increasing eforts at universities across the country to address issues of equity, diversity, inclusion and anti- racism, it has become clear that there is a need to estab- lish a common vocabulary and shared understanding for faculty and other individuals conducting research in this area. Much of the literature, as well as these terms, is grounded in the context of academic medicine in the Open Access *Correspondence: jose.rodriguez@hsc.utah.edu 1 University of Utah Health, 26 S 2000 E, 5750B EHSEB, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article