Advocacy Committee

As pediatricians, we are natural advocates for our patients, families, and children as a whole. Our goal is to increase awareness and advocate for children in our community regarding various topics. Current projects that have gained traction include obtaining gun locks to pass out at our pediatric resident clinics and encouraging the community to vote in the upcoming election. One of our main events of the year will be the MIAAP Advocacy Day in the spring. We hope to find quarterly volunteer opportunities to connect with our surrounding community to allow us to build lasting relationships.

Please reach out to any of us if you are interested in participating or would like to share your advocacy ideas!

Committee Leadership:

Nancy Couturier, DO (nantran@med.umich.edu)
Sharanya Bamzai, MD (sharanj@med.umich.edu)
Brittany Silverman, MD (bsilv@med.umich.edu)
Kristina Zalewski, MD (zalewskk@med.umich.edu)

Instagram: @umichpeds_advocacy

Ongoing Projects and Initiatives 

Free Gun Locks

• We have partnered with Moms Demand Action and the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office to secure hundreds of gun locks for us to hand out to families at our continuity clinics.

Vot-ER

• We have been using resources available through Vot-ER to encourage our community to vote in the upcoming 2024 election.

• Please see the Vot-ER tab for more information and resources.

Pediatrics Student Interest Group (PSIG)

• We plan to partner with medical students at University of Michigan in the PSIG and to support each other with future advocacy events.

Community Outreach

• We plan to set up quarterly volunteer opportunities with our community partners (and more) to keep members of our program engaged with families in our community.

Newsletter

• We will ask our Chief Residents to include any advocacy updates in their Weekly Reader's Digest

Community Partners

Food Insecurity - Food Gatherers 

Gun Safety - Moms Demand Action 

Youth Justice Reform - Michigan Center for Youth Justice

Reproductive Rights - Planned Parenthood

Early Childhood Education - Early On/WISD 

Early Literacy - Reach Out and Read

Past Projects and Initiatives 

Social Hour/Book Club

Food Drives

Pediatricians for Black Lives

About Us: We are a group of pediatricians, both faculty and residents, that has come together with the goal to make sustainable anti-racist change at the University of Michigan. 

Disclaimer: We are a group of resident allies and our goal is to amplify and center the voices and experiences of our Black colleagues and patients. We are holding ourselves and our program accountable for measurable change. We’re aware that this may include missteps but also know that silence is a misuse of the power and privilege we have been given as physicians. We are continually open to feedback and seeking growth.

Mission: Our overarching goals were created purposefully in alignment with the goals and voices of Michigan Medical School’s White Coats for Black Lives (an initiative of the Black Medical Association). Please see their initial letter here.  These goals have been organized into a 3-armed approach: 

• Support of current Black and URM medical students, faculty, and employees 

• Resident recruitment and education, both reflecting a commitment to anti-racist practices

• Sustainable, informed engagement with the community  

Initiatives:

•  We wrote a proposal to the residency Recruitment Committee / leadership with evidence-based approaches to eliminate bias in recruitment of residents, which sparked a great dialogue and we were pleased to hear the Recruitment staff had adopted so much of what we know is evidence-based: For example, using standardized interview questions and scoring of interviewees to eliminate bias.  Ensuring every interviewer is versed in our program’s DEI initiatives and can answer questions and guide applicants to the right place to get their questions answered.

• Resident members of our group are emailing applicants personally who are interested in DEI to help answer their questions/concerns as they apply

• Ran a Reach out and Read book drive that raised enough funds to buy 550 brand-new books from locally owned businesses in multiple languages including Arabic, Spanish, and Mandarin and with children of color featured in the books to represent our patient population and foster early literacy

• Voting initiatives!!! We got voting registration posters approved for all pediatric outpatient clinics as well as lanyards from VotEr to encourage our patients and their parents to vote (and help them register in the moment!) We discussed voting with our patients during well checks and documented it using one of our new dot phrases.

• Advocacy dot phrases for each resident (please steal them if you’d like them!) (automatically added to all current residents smart phrases) --> Find them at .advo

• Supporting pre-med and current URM medical students

• Doctors in training

• Improving the clerkship survey for all students including URM students and meeting with leadership

• Meetings with BMA leadership

Some of our educational advocacy and DEI themed noon conferences so far:

Derm in people of color - available here ICYMI!

• Part 1    & Part 2

• AAP recap and Vote Kids initiative

• A case of juvenile dermatomyositis and how to recognize it in children of color

• Advocacy in the Age of Covid 19 with Ypsilanti PCP Dr. Terence Joiner:

•  A criminal justice panel that included our new Washtenaw County Prosecutor, Eli Savit