Health care delivery

Our Goal: To raise awareness of the historical and persisting discriminations against individuals of color in health care applications throughout the years, from the Flexner report (If incidentally) to overt discriminations of race, with physician to physician, physician to patient, patient to patient, and institutional disadvantages that lead to medical inequities.

For Qualitiative examples of personal impacts and how we could evolve moving forward, please consult the table on this page.

Current Steps

Not all is for naught however as some efforts have already been made to improve and grow such as:

"Curricular programs focused on addressing race and racism have already been implemented by some medical schools across the country. For example, the University of Minnesota Medical School convened a 12-month curriculum informed by Public Health Critical Race Praxis methodology, with an aim to better help students from marginalized groups and privileged groups discuss the concepts of racism." And "Columbia University School of Medicine created a racially diverse student-faculty task force dedicated to promoting a bias-free curriculum, which has led to the development of guidelines for faculty to promote increased awareness of bias in their curricula as well as formation of an online portal for Columbia students, staff, and faculty to anonymously submit narratives of troubling and positive experiences regarding inclusivity and bias."

Daher, Yasmeen, Evan T. Austin, Bryce T. Munter, Lauren Murphy, and Kendra Gray. “The History of Medical Education: A Commentary on Race.” Journal of Osteopathic Medicine 121, no. 2 (January 1, 2021): 163–70. https://doi.org/10.1515/jom-2020-0212.

Future Steps

"Welton et al. also provided a conceptual framework for antiracist change. In that model, five components of change were identified: context and conditions focus of change, scale and degree, leadership, and continuous improvement cycle. Guidelines were given for how to address each of those on both an individual and systemic level. Some examples of actions to be taken include conducting departmental climate surveys, examining admissions data over the past 10 years, implementing implicit bias professional development, providing professional development for diverse leaders, and asking key questions in the admissions process such as identifying where recruitment is taking place.30 While much of this change can be broadly applied to all types of postsecondary education, there are key strategies that medical schools and societies can specifically implement to improve the current inequalities in medical school admissions, racially biased medical education, and society membership. "

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