The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has selected 11 medical schools to join a newly launched collaboration to eliminate racism and bias in medical education.
The project—called Anti-Racist Transformation in Medical Education (ART in Med Ed)—will engage these schools in using training modules and tools that were developed at Mount Sinai to foster and manage anti-racist cultural change. The new collaboration was made possible by a generous grant from the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation.
Last summer, Icahn Mount Sinai invited medical schools throughout North America to send proposals to join this effort. Forty-eight schools, or approximately one-third of all accredited medical schools, responded. Eleven were chosen based on their commitment to implementing a transformational-change strategy and willingness to build a diverse team of leaders, faculty, students, and staff that would be able to participate over three years. Mount Sinai sought to include private and public schools, as well as MD and DO programs, from a broad geographic range.
Leona Hess, PhD
One of the participating schools is the David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) at the University of California, Los Angeles. According to Julian McNeil, DGSOM’s Racism Program Manager, the medical school had committed $5 million to anti-racism efforts in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and inequities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The ART in Med Ed program, he says, will provide DGSOM with a framework to guide these efforts.
“It was clear that Mount Sinai had given considerable thought to how organizational science and change management could be applied to advancing anti-racism efforts in a medical school context, and that is what we loved about the project,” Mr. McNeil explains. “This is a model for change that is grounded in theory that has been tested and refined, and that provides us with best practices to guide our work.”
The University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic Medicine (UIWSOM), based in San Antonio, Texas, is also participating in the ART in Med Ed project. UIWSOM graduated its first class in May 2021, and was motivated to participate in ART in Med Ed for several reasons, says Linda Grace Solis, PhD, Assistant Professor of Applied Humanities, Department of Clinical and Applied Science Education.
Students had expressed an interest in exploring ways in which the school was perpetuating ideas that could lead to inequities, she says, and had voiced concerns over elements of the curriculum, such as the predominant use of imagery of white people in dermatology classes.
Jennifer Dias, a rising third-year medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine, is devoting a scholarly year to helping run the Art in Med Ed project.
“What appealed to us about ART in Med Ed was the project’s structure and its focus on change management,” Dr. Solis says. “I see that as the secret sauce that is missing from most diversity, equity, and inclusion work because it helps people understand why this change matters so that they get on board.”
The Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons is also part of the ART in Med Ed project. “It is helpful to be part of a group that is moving in the same direction, and to have an external partner guiding us, because it takes some of the weight off our shoulders in figuring out how to do this,” says Todd A. Bates, PhD, MSEd, MA, Education and Learning Specialist with the Center for Education Research and Evaluation at Columbia University, who is working with Mount Sinai. “There is also a degree of hopefulness that comes with participating in a project that has a proven track record in this area. All these elements are a huge benefit in making progress and achieving more equity for our students, faculty, and staff.”
Leona Hess, PhD, Director of Strategy and Equity Education Programs at Icahn Mount Sinai, who helped create and now leads the ART in Med Ed project, says ongoing feedback from the participating students, staff, and faculty at each school will help Mount Sinai improve the project.
“We want to see whether the schools are able to use our learning strategy, content, design, and support to build capacity and address and dismantle racism regardless of their location or demographics,” Dr. Hess says. “As we gather that information, we will refine our learning modules and tools and look at the possibility of bringing more schools on board.”
The goal, she says, is for all medical schools to ultimately dismantle racism and bias from their learning environments so that all patients receive health care that is just, equitable, and free of racism and bias.
The following is a list of all 11 schools that will be part of Mount Sinai’s ART in Med Ed project:
College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan
Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles
Duke University School of Medicine
East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine
The George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences
The Ohio State University College of Medicine
University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix
University of Minnesota Medical School
University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine
University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic Medicine