Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

The Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota is committed to intentional growth and attention to matters of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) across departmental initiatives including, but not limited to hiring and residency match processes, patient care, leadership, education/learning, research, and community outreach. Within departmental leadership, we have a Vice-Chair for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and a Vice-Chair for Community Engagement and Advocacy. For further information about DEI work in the department, please visit:

https://med.umn.edu/familymedicine/equity-diversity-inclusion

St. John's specifically engages in the following practices to grow our own DEI work:

• DEI Stewardship Committee

  • Book Club (reading "How to be an Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi for academic year 2022-23)

  • Ensuring that DEI issues are woven throughout formalized learning opportunities such as our didactics curriculum

• Precepting Towards Social Justice

  • This program was developed by our department’s Community Health Committee to seek additional means to understand, engage with, and embed social justice and anti-racism principles in our clinical practice and daily work in primary care. The program aims to provide tools that will help to cultivate and generate conversation between patients and clinicians about important social justice issues.

  • 2021-22: Monthly topics discussed at faculty meetings for attendings to determine how to engage residents/learners in conversations around these topics and take into consideration for patient care.

  • 2022-25: Quarterly deep dives into topics presented to the whole clinic (providers and staff) to work on applying lessons learned in clinical care and patient interaction.

• Intentional efforts to reduce bias in hiring resident physicians including blind review of application materials and standardized application material evaluations.

• Intentional efforts to hire staff that reflect the demographics of the populations we serve

• Clinic quality improvement projects to address disparities

For more information about our program's DEI work and community engagement: https://sites.google.com/umn.edu/interviewing-at-st-johns/get-to-know-us/a-little-about-our-program?authuser=0