The National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA) has released a new report regarding the status of different specialties within the physician assistant (PA) field, including the racial representation among PAs in each specialty.
As of 2024, Black PAs represent just 3.9 percent of all PAs working in primary care settings in the United States, only a 0.1 percent increase since 2020. In comparison, White PAs represent 78.4 percent of those working in primary care.
Of the 25 disciplines included in the report, only three specialities have a PA workforce that is at least 5 percent Black: obstetrics and gynecology (5.5 percent), occupational medicine (5.3 percent), and internal medicine – general practice (5.0 percent). Black PAs are the least represented in plastic surgery (1.5 percent), dermatology (1.6 percent), and orthopaedic surgery (2.0 percent).
Notably, no speciality experienced more than a 0.8 percent increase or decrease in the past four years. Thus, the overall status of working Black PAs has remained virtually unchanged since 2020.
