David Muller, MD
Dear students,
A lot has happened since our last update on ISMMS’s race and bias initiatives. The teaching faculty, administrative staff, and leadership of Icahn School of Medicine have an unwavering commitment to addressing these issues, and to working closely with students so that our efforts are transparent and accountable to all.
All Course and Clerkship Directors have had an Unconscious Bias training session with a focus on micro-aggressions in the learning environment. This session will be followed up with a two hour workshop that will be delivered in 2016. We will also be developing a strategic plan to address micro-aggressions in all our learning sessions.
Thanks to successful fundraising for our race and bias initiatives, we have secured funding for twenty medical education faculty and staff to enroll in an intensive training program that involves ten weekly two-hour sessions. All participants will be trained to deliver education on racism and bias and will commit to disseminating this training in different departments and venues across the institution. The first group of ten will be trained this spring, the second group next fall.
Dr. Rainier Soriano, Dr. Jessica Reid-Adam, and Associate Dean Michelle Sainte have recently completed an intensive three-day seminar on identifying organizational leverage points that help diminish the impact of unconscious bias in interactions, processes, and structures on an institutional level.
There have been two Town Hall meetings, one for faculty and one for students. The next Town Hall meeting is scheduled for November 30 at 5pm in Annenberg 12-01 and is open to all students and faculty.
Many thanks to the students from the Anti-Racism Coalition (ARC) who participated in the discussion we had on Thursday, November 19. As always, the students were incredibly well-prepared, organized, and thoughtful. I personally feel like a learned a great deal from them about the specific goals and general principles of their group and this national movement. I shared with the group a perspective on how we can work together to undo racism at ISMMS, with the ultimate goal of achieving true diversity and inclusion, mitigating bias, and enlisting everyone – staff, other trainees, teaching faculty, and institutional leadership – as allies along the way.
The ARC expressed a very strong sentiment that the school would benefit from outside consultation on the state of racism at ISMMS and how to address it in all its forms. We agree with this approach and will begin the process of exploring how to plan and implement this external review. Our hope is to complete such a consultation in the first half of 2016.
Finally, on Monday November 23rd, leadership from Medical Education, CMCA and ODI participated in a daylong retreat in an effort to review, align, and revise many of our policies, from recruitment and admissions, to student support and advising, to the way in which students are graded, selected for awards, and ultimately ranked. The key themes of the retreat were enhanced transparency, accountability, diversity and inclusion. More to come on the results of this work in 2016.
Thank you for your passion and commitment as we work to create a learning and clinical environment we can all be proud of.