Diversity as an individual resource in care work of the future: a scoping review protocol Lorke, Mariya Carstensen, Vivian Background: Evidence suggests that appropriately managed diversity in healthcare teams can enhance problem-solving, resilience, job satisfaction – all crucial for workforce retention. This scoping review aims to map evidence on how lived diversity experience is conceptualized and operationalized as an individual resource among care workers. Methods: An interdisciplinary approach across social anthropology, health sciences, and labor economics will be adopted. The databases to be searched include MEDLINE/PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus and Web of Science and sources of grey literature. A two-stage screening process will be followed by systematic data extraction, with findings synthesized through descriptive numerical summaries and qualitative thematic analysis. Results: This scoping review is expected to shift the focus from organisational-level diversity research to research on how diversity contributes as an individual resource in care work contexts. It will map how diversity-as-resource is theoretically operationalized across disciplines, identifying existing measurement approaches and potentially revealing critical gaps in current assessment methods. Conclusion: By synthesizing evidence on how care workers’ lived diversity experiences are deployed as valuable competencies in care delivery, this review will provide foundational knowledge to inform workforce transformational strategies Frontiers Media SA 2026 info:eu-repo/semantics/article doc-type:article text http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501 https://www.hsbi.de/publikationsserver/record/7224 Lorke M, Carstensen V. Diversity as an individual resource in care work of the future: a scoping review protocol. <i>Frontiers in Public Health</i>. 2026;14. doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1892688">10.3389/fpubh.2026.1892688</a> eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1892688 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/issn/2296-2565 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess