Education & Training Glossary
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Any obstruction that prevents people with disabilities from using standard facilities, equipment and resources.
An adjustment to make a program, facility, or resource accessible to a person with a disability.
Belonging is feeling welcomed, valued, and respected as a member of a community.
The term “bias” has many, broad uses in our society. Statistically speaking, a bias may be defined as a systematic inaccuracy , with different causes in different contexts (e.g., a scale may be biased). Human bias is when we are systematically inaccurate in our thinking, feelings and attitudes, behavior, and things we produce. We may be biased towards or against different social identity groups, such as race, gender, or religion. This produces unfairness and injustice.
A bias incident is any incident in which one feels that an individual within our UW Medicine community was treated differently based on their identities, and this experience could produce harm. Bias incidents can include experiences of racial bias/racism, sexism, gender bias, ableism, or other actions, behaviors, or processes that do not reflect the values of inclusion and equity expected in our community.
Intolerant prejudice that glorifies one’s own group and denigrates members of other groups.
Source: National Conference for Community and Justice, St. Louis Region. Unpublished handout used in the Dismantling Racism Institute program.
The belief that some traits and behaviors are innate and biological in humans rather than the effects of the culture, environment, etc.
A term referring to “Black and/or Indigenous People of Color.” While “POC” or People of Color is often used as well, BIPOC explicitly leads with Black and Indigenous identities, which helps to counter anti-Black racism and invisibilization of Native communities.
Source: Creating Cultures and Practices for Racial Equity: A Toolbox for Advancing Racial Equity for Arts and Cultural Organizations, Nayantara Sen & Terry Keleher, Race Forward (2021)
Cisgender means a person who has lived their whole life with society’s expected gender identity consistent with their sex assigned at birth and society’s expectations and roles about that gender.
Civil rights are personal rights for all U.S. citizens protected by the U.S. Constitution and federal laws.
Using white skin color as the standard, colorism is the allocation of privilege and favor to lighter skin colors and disadvantage to darker skin colors. Colorism operates both within and across racial and ethnic groups.
Source: Burton, Linda M et al., “Critical Race Theories, Colorism, and the Decade’s Research on Families of Color,” Journal of Marriage and Family 72 (2010), pp. 440–459
Culture refers to a way of life of a (very small to very large) group of people–the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.
According to Executive Order 31, discrimination is conduct that treats a person less favorably because of the person’s protected class.
Diversity means having differences among people in a group, like different races, genders, religions, cultures, experiences, and ideas.
Equality is having things be the same. In this case, we define equality as giving all groups the same opportunities and resources. Equality does not take oppression and privilege into consideration in allocating opportunities and resources.
Equity means providing resources and supports to groups depending on their needs and the different obstacles and mistreatment they have faced.
Ethnicity is a social group a person belongs to, and either identifies with or is identified with by others, as a result of a mix of cultural and other factors including language, diet, religion, ancestry and physical features traditionally associated with race.
A social construct used to classify a person as a man, woman, or some other identity. Fundamentally different from the sex one is assigned at birth.
How individuals present themselves through appearance and behavior in accordance with or in opposition to social and cultural influences and expectations.
Someone whose gender identity is flexible and not fixed.
Gender is not the same as sex. Gender is an entirely personal experience of one’s internal or core self that is not always consistent with your anatomy.
According to Executive Order 31, Harassment is conduct directed at a person because of the person’s protected class that is unwelcome and sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive that:
It could reasonably be expected to create an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work or learning environment, or
It has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work or academic performance.
The differences in health among different communities.
Health equity means every patient, regardless of background or income, has equal opportunity to achieve their best health.
Because of systematic mistreatment, certain groups experience less access to quality healthcare and poorer treatment. These differences are known as healthcare inequities.
Health justice aims to dismantle barriers to healthcare and improve outcomes for all communities. Health justice recognizes and takes into account existing health inequities and focuses on those affected most by it.
Healthcare equity means every patient can access quality care and receives equitable treatment.
A sexual orientation in which a person feels physically and emotionally attracted to people of a gender other than their own.
https://health.ucdavis.edu/belonging/community-engagement/community-resources/lgbtq-glossary
Sometimes we are aware that we are acting or thinking with bias and sometimes we are not aware. Implicit bias is a concept that describes when we may not be fully consciously aware of our biases towards or against a specific social group. The Office of Healthcare Equity does not emphasize implicit bias in our trainings because at times it can oversimplify the complex causes of bias, function as a justification for bias, and make it harder to change biased behavior.
Inclusion means everyone is included in all aspects of community life, no matter who they are.
At the individual level, racism is prejudiced or otherwise biased thoughts, feelings, and actions directed towards members of marginalized racial groups by individuals from more privileged racial groups.
Inequity is a characteristic of a situation where there are not equal opportunities and different groups face different life obstacles and outcomes imposed by current or historical conditions.
This term is sometimes used similarly to systemic and structural racism but also describes racism within a particular institution. This term is relevant to the institution of UW Medicine.
Intersectionality is a framework used to understand how a person’s experience is a unique combination of their social and political identities. This combination can be both privileged and marginalize at the same time. Intersectionality includes the many facets of your being and how you view, and express yourself.
Social and racial justice is the systematic fair treatment of diverse groups, resulting in equitable opportunities and outcomes for all. This involves confroting and directly addressing both current and historical social and racial injustices.
Macroagressions describe when prejudice and other manifestations of bias are enacted by the institutions, structures, and systems of a society, as opposed to being between individuals.
Being marginalized means being treated worse than others and being unfairly kept in or removed to a position of power or influence because of aspects of your identity.
Microaggressions are brief, commonplace, everyday statements or actions that are expressions of objectification, prejudice, stereotypes, and denial of identity against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority. “Micro” does not mean small or subtle; microaggressions can range from very small and subtle to obvious and explicit. “Micro” means referring to bias that occurs at the everyday, individual or interpersonal level.
Someone who does not describe their gender as fitting either man or woman.
Oppression is the systemic unjust treatment of people based on their identities rooted in historical power structures.
Prejudice is one of the causes of human bias. Prejudice is a “pre-judgement,” meaning having a feeling or attitude about someone without any knowledge or basis. Prejudice is not simply feeling hatred, disgust, or hostility towards someone or a group; it can also be a small difference in positive feelings for one group versus another. It can be seen as the “emotional” component of bias.
Being privileged means having unfair advantages and power. You are treated better than others because of aspects of your identity.
Race is an inaccurate social and political idea about why groups of people look and act differently that was created without a modern scientific understanding of why people look or act differently.
The belief that some traits, abilities, and characteristics are innate biological differences between racial groups.
Racialized medicine is the practice and belief by the scientific and medical community that a biological notion of race is important for understanding and treating health conditions. The practice diverts attentions and resources away from social determinants of health that cause gaps in health between different racial groups.
Racism is not legally defined. There are many types and levels of racism. In general, racism is distinguished from prejudice in that racism is prejudice and other manifestations of bias directed towards members of historically marginalized racial groups by individuals from more societally and contextually privileged racial groups.
Sex is identified and assigned to you when you are born. It is based on observations of your anatomy. Typically but not always this is male or female.
Sexual orientation is one’s romantic, emotional, and sexual attractions to others.
Social Determinants of Health are the conditions and environments that people are born, grow, live, work, play, and age in that affect health and quality-of-life.
Stereotypes are one of the causes of human bias. A stereotype is thinking that everyone in a group is the same in some way, instead of seeing people as individuals. It can be seen as the “cognitive” component of bias.
Describes how laws, policies, practices, and norms within different systems produce racially inequitable outcomes. These structures are relevant to UW Medicine.
Systemic racism is the broadest level of racism. Systemic racism refers to how whole systems and often all systems in our society—for example, political, legal, economic, health care, school, and criminal justice systems—collectively produce racially inequitable outcomes.
Someone assigned female at birth with man gender identity.
Someone assigned male at birth with woman gender identity.
