About The Workshop
Title:
Ethical and Cultural Considerations of Serving the Underserved: A Workshop Series and Hackathon
Objectives:
Educate and raise awareness in the UMN Medical School community about the influence of culture, language, socioeconomic status, and additional factors on delivering equitable healthcare in under-resourced settings across the US and globally
Encourage the development of long-term and sustainable partnerships between underserved communities and future medical providers to empower both groups
Description:
It has become increasingly common for health professional students and residents to work with underserved populations, both globally and locally, throughout their training. Globally, thousands of health professional students and residents choose to spend weeks to months rotating, taking electives, and joining mission trips across various low- and middle-income countries. Several others choose to work with underserved groups in urban and rural communities across MN. Working with these communities raises important ethical and cultural challenges of how to properly provide safe clinical care and be inclusive of these communities in research studies. Unknowingly, students and young professionals may cause harm to patients in these communities, as they often lack knowledge on how to deal with these ethical and cultural dilemmas due to a lack of formal education offered on these topics in their school curriculum.
We are hosting a series of workshops followed by a “hackathon” event that will better prepare health professional students and residents to work responsibly with these underserved communities in the context of clinical care and research. The series of workshops will teach the six components of The Brocher Declaration in three workshops: 1) “Bidirectional Input and Learning”, 2) “Empowered Host Countries & Building Community Partnerships”, and 3) “Cultural Humility and Accountability in Global Health”. For those interested in putting their learning into action, the workshop will prepare participants for a “hackathon” challenge where they will be given a difficult problem/scenario related to ethical/cultural dilemmas in working with underserved communities globally/locally. Participants will then prepare and submit a 5-minute presentation on a unique solution. After submission, the proposed solution to the complex scenario will be judged by experts. The top two finishers of the event will receive either a $500 (1st place) , $300 (2nd place), or $200 (3rd place) cash prize.
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, many inequities in healthcare internationally have been brought to light. It is critical that future healthcare providers understand the ethics of serving and working with underserved and marginalized communities in all settings. We believe this workshop will allow future healthcare providers to be well-prepared to deal with those challenges.