BERST Academy: Teaching for Justice

It takes a deep commitment to change, and an even deeper commitment to grow. - Ralph Ellison.

Some key areas highlighted in the literature featured on this page:
-Representations of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) in curricular materials — including textbooks, question banks, and course slides.
-Faculty preparedness to teach on identity, privilege, bias, and racism, and the potential for faculty development. 
-Toolkits and workshop models to address identity, privilege, and microaggressions in clinical encounters.
-Methods to solicit feedback from students and other stakeholders on existing curricula as well as studies on student perception.
-Methods to increase recruitment of BIPOC within health professions programs and in faculty.
-The iterative development of anti-racist curricula through feedback — particularly “Incorporating Antiracism Coursework into a Cultural Competency Curriculum”by Gordon et al which details a lengthy and worthile process of creating full-semester courses for both students and faculty.

As educators, we can often feel the need to jump into action to address issues of the day in a timely manner. While these articles offer methods and opportunities to act, they also emphasize that dismantling white supremacy and its presence in healthcare and health professions education requires deliberate planning and administrative support. A few additional workshops on the topic are simply not enough. In “Changing How Race Is Portrayed in Medical Education,” Nieblas-Bedolla et al call such workshops that already exist "a patched-together solution to a much larger problem.” As a systemic problem, racism also requires approaches to change and challenge a system rather than only offering education to the individuals operating within it.

Chow, C. J., Case, G. A., & Matias, C. E. (2019). Tools for Discussing Identity and Privilege Among Medical Students, Trainees, and Faculty. MedEdPORTAL, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.15766/mep_2374-8265.10864

Dennis, S. N., Gold, R. S., &; Wen, F. K. (2019). Learner Reactions to Activities Exploring Racism as a Social Determinant of Health. Family Medicine, 51(1), 41–47. https://doi.org/10.22454/fammed.2019.704337

Echeverri, M., & Dise, T. (2017). Racial Dynamics and Cultural Competence Training in Medical and Pharmacy Education. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 28(1), 266–278. https://doi.org/10.1353/hpu.2017.0023

Ewen, S. C., Barrett, J., Paul, D., Askew, D., Webb, G., & Wilkin, A. (2015). When a patient's ethnicity is declared, medical students' decision-making processes are affected. Internal Medicine Journal, 45(8), 805–812. https://doi.org/10.1111/imj.12800

Garneau, A. B., Browne, A. J., & Varcoe, C. (2017). Drawing on antiracist approaches toward a critical antidiscriminatory pedagogy for nursing. Nursing Inquiry, 25(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/nin.12211

Gonzalez, C. M., Garba, R. J., Liguori, A., Marantz, P. R., Mckee, M. D., & Lypson, M. L. (2018). How to Make or Break Implicit Bias Instruction. Academic Medicine, 93(11S). https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0000000000002386

Guh, J., Harris, C. R., Martinez, P., Chen, F. M., & Gianutsos, L. P. (2019). Antiracism in Residency: A Multimethod Intervention to Increase Racial Diversity in a Community-Based Residency Program. Family Medicine, 51(1), 37–40. https://doi.org/10.22454/fammed.2019.987621

Gordon, W. M., Mccarter, S. A. U., &; Myers, S. J. (2016). Incorporating Antiracism Coursework into a Cultural Competency Curriculum. Journal of Midwifery &; Women's Health, 61(6), 721–725. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmwh.12552

Hardeman, R. R., Burgess, D., Murphy, K., Satin, D. J., Nielsen, J., Potter, T. M., … Cunningham, B. A. (2018). Developing a Medical School Curriculum on Racism: Multidisciplinary, Multiracial Conversations Informed by Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP ). Ethnicity & Disease, 28(Supp 1), 271. https://doi.org/10.18865/ed.28.s1.271

Hojjati, A., Beavis, A. S. W., Kassam, A., Choudhury, D., Fraser, M., Masching, R., & Nixon, S. A. (2017). Educational content related to postcolonialism and indigenous health inequities recommended for all rehabilitation students in Canada: a qualitative study. Disability and Rehabilitation, 40(26), 3206–3216. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638288.2017.1381185

Karasik, R. J., & Kishimoto, K. (2016). Is gerontology ready for anti-racist pedagogy? A survey of educators’ practices and perspectives. Gerontology & Geriatrics Education, 39(1), 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/02701960.2015.1115984

Manzi, J., Casapulla, S., Kropf, K., Baker, B., Biechler, M., Finch, T ….,Randolph, C. (2020). Responding to Racism in the Clinical Setting: A Novel Use of Forum Theatre in Social Medicine Education. Journal of Medical Humanities. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-020-09608-8

Martin, G. C., Kirgis, J., Sid, E., & Sabin, J. A. (2016). Equitable Imagery in the Preclinical Medical School Curriculum. Academic Medicine, 91(7), 1002–1006. https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0000000000001105

Metzl, J. M., Petty, J., & Olowojoba, O. V. (2018). Using a structural competency framework to teach structural racism in pre-health education. Social Science & Medicine, 199, 189–201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.06.029

Nieblas-Bedolla, E., Christophers, B., Nkinsi, N. T., Schumann, P. D., & Stein, E. (2020). Changing How Race Is Portrayed in Medical Education. Academic Medicine, Publish Ahead of Print. https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0000000000003496

Olsen, L. D. (2019). The Conscripted Curriculum and the Reproduction of Racial Inequalities in Contemporary U.S. Medical Education. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 60(1), 55–68. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146518821388

Onyeabor, S. (2015). Addressing Health Disparities at the Intersection of Disability, Race, and Ethnicity: the Need for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Training for Healthcare Professionals. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, 3(3), 389–393. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-015-0140-9

Phelan, S. M., Burke, S. E., Cunningham, B. A., Perry, S. P., Hardeman, R. R., Dovidio, J. F., … Ryn, M. V. (2019). The Effects of Racism in Medical Education on Students’ Decisions to Practice in Underserved or Minority Communities. Academic Medicine, 94(8), 1178–1189. https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0000000000002719

Ripp, K., & Braun, L. (2017). Race/Ethnicity in Medical Education: An Analysis of a Question Bank for Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination. Teaching and Learning in Medicine, 29(2), 115–122. https://doi.org/10.1080/10401334.2016.1268056

Ryn, M. V., Hardeman, R., Phelan, S. M., Phd, D. J. B., Dovidio, J. F., Herrin, J., … Przedworski, J. M. (2015). Medical School Experiences Associated with Change in Implicit Racial Bias Among 3547 Students: A Medical Student CHANGES Study Report. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 30(12), 1748–1756. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-015-3447-7

Sandoval, R. S., Afolabi, T., Said, J., Dunleavy, S., Chatterjee, A., & Ölveczky, D. (2020). Building a Tool Kit for Medical and Dental Students: Addressing Microaggressions and Discrimination on the Wards. MedEdPORTAL, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.15766/mep_2374-8265.10893

Sorensen, J., Jervelund, S. S., Norredam, M., Kristiansen, M., & Krasnik, A. (2017). Cultural competence in medical education: A questionnaire study of Danish medical teachers’ perceptions of and preparedness to teach cultural competence. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 45(2), 153–160. https://doi.org/10.1177/1403494816685937

White-Davis, T., Edgoose, J., Speights, J. S. B., Fraser, K., Ring, J. M., Guh, J., &; Saba, G. W. (2018). Addressing Racism in Medical Education. Family Medicine, 50(5), 364–368. https://doi.org/10.22454/fammed.2018.875510