Assessing Diversity of Invited Speakers at the AAOS Annual Meeting

Introduction Orthopaedic surgery remains one of the least diverse fields in medicine, particularly in the higher levels of academic medicine. There is limited literature examining representation of females as speakers and presenters at national meetings, although this is a common stepping stone in an academic career. Purpose The purpose of this study is to assess gender diversity among invited speakers at the AAOS Annual Meeting between 2015 and 2022 to determine if this increased over time. Methods The AAOS Annual Meeting final programs from 2015 to 2022 were reviewed to collect the names of all invited speakers (paper presentation session moderators, Ask an Expert session moderators, ICL moderators, and ICL presenters). An internet search of publicly available websites was conducted to determine the gender of each speaker. We then determined the percentage of female speakers in each category each year and compared these across years. Results There were non-significant positive trends in the percentage of female ICL presenters, paper presentation sessions moderators, and Ask an Expert sessions moderators, there was a significant positive trend in the percentage of female ICL moderators between 2015 and 2022. Conclusions Speaking at national meetings is an important component of advancing one’s career in academic surgery and can also provide crucial role models to aspiring young surgeons. However, despite various efforts to increase gender diversity in orthopaedic surgery, there have been few significant changes in the representation of female invited speakers at the AAOS annual meeting since 2015.