Training FAQs

SB 5227 was passed by the Washington State Legislature in 2021. It requires all public institutions of higher education to provide Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) training to all faculty and staff, beginning with the 2022-23 academic year.

Because UW Medicine is connected to the University of Washington, this bill applies to all of our faculty and staff. To meet this requirement:

• All new UW Medicine faculty and staff must take UW Medicine’s “Advancing Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Training” e-learning module.
• In addition, all faculty and staff must complete the training annually.
• Everyone who completes the training also must complete a brief satisfaction survey for credit. This survey is included at the end of the training.

All UW Medicine faculty and staff are required. This includes:

• Full-time and part-time employees
• Affiliate and volunteer clinical faculty
• Employees of all of our entities, including UW Medical Center (Montlake), Harborview, Northwest, Airlift, UW Primary Care, and the School of Medicine.
• Interns, residents, fellows, and post-docs
• If you are at Fred Hutch but primarily employed at UW medicine, you are required to take our training.
• This does NOT include students, including undergraduate students, medical students, and graduate students (master’s degrees and PhDs, even if you have a paid position as a research or teaching assistant).

Please email hcesched@uw.edu and we will help you.

The Washington State Legislature also passed SB5228, which provides different requirements for EDI training for students. These requirements are being met with different processes and students will learn about these requirements separately and according to a different timeline.

This course was developed before the Senate Bill was passed. It traditionally has been required as part of UW Medicine’s new staff training and as an annual refresher training for all staff.  It is an asynchronous, e-learning course that takes approximately one hour to complete.  

Because UW Medicine provides this course as an annual refresher, while SB5227 mandate requires completing a course every two years, simply taking the annual refresher complies with the SB5227 requirement.  

This training series was developed in 2020 in response to UW Medicine Leadership pledging to become an antiracist organization and requiring all faculty and staff to take EDI training as part of that commitment. It consists of five separate 90-minute courses, each provided by a live expert trainer over zoom (or in-person upon request). The content areas of the Foundational Training series include:

1. Identity, Intersectionality, and Privilege
2. Social Determinants of Health
3. Gender and Sexual Diversity
4. History of Race and Racism in Science and Medicine
5. Interrupting Bias and Microaggressions

Please check with your department leader about the department’s plan for taking these trainings.

You may also sign up for these trainings as an individual, independent of your department. The training page of the OHCE website includes more detailed information about the series, upcoming trainings, and how to register. 

Please contact hcesched@uw.edu.

Because the Foundational Training Series covers similar content but is much longer and more detailed than is the Advancing EDI training, taking the Foundational Series is sufficient.  However, SB5227 requires completing a course every two years.  You can meet this repeated requirement either by re-enrolling in the Foundational Series or completing the annual Advancing EDI training refresher when it is assigned to you. 

Because the Advancing EDI training is much smaller than the Foundational Training Series, and because you must complete the Advancing EDI Training every year, it is not a replacement for the Foundational Training Series, which you are only expected to take once. Please check with your department leader about taking the Foundational Training Series.

Yes, this counts.

Yes, any student can sign up for our foundational trainings. However, medical students get a version of our trainings as part of their curriculum, so if they sign up it will be redundant. Other students like PhD students can sign up and do not get it in their curriculum otherwise.

We are able to provide continuing education credit for some but not all of our trainings. Those that provide credit are identified in our training calendar.

The requirement to take OHCE’s Foundational Training Series is not related to any additional departmental trainings that have been provided by your department.

Our registration form asks you to identify your needs, and please contact us at hcesched@uw.edu for additional questions. We do our best to accommodate your requests.

Yes, you may either look up your records on the Learning Hub or contact us directly at hcesched@uw.edu and we can provide you a report.

Yes! Contact us at hcesched@uw.edu and we would love to talk. There are multiple opportunities depending on your availability, interests, and skills.