Medical Education

AAMC Strategy Summit Proceedings

This report focuses on the outputs of the Action Collaborative for Black Men in Medicine inaugural Strategy Summit
held Oct. 20-21, 2022, in Washington, D.C. With over 100 participants that included individuals from high schools,
colleges, and universities including HBCUs, medical schools, organizations representing students, higher education,
youth development, community-based organizations, foundations, government agencies, health systems, and
insurers, we engaged in a series of strategy-development activities based on the initial work of the Action Collaborative.

Read the proceedings here.

Seeing the Window, Finding the Spider: Applying Critical Race Theory to Medical Education to Make Up Where Biomedical Models and Social Determinants of Health Curricula Fall Short

Jennifer Tsai, Edwin Lindo, Khiara Bridges

From Frontiers in Public Health: A professional and moral medical education should equip trainees with the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively advance health equity. In this Perspective, we argue that critical theoretical frameworks should be taught to physicians so they can interrogate structural sources of racial inequities and achieve this goal. Read the full article here.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.653643/full

Calculating estimated glomerular filtration rate without the race correction factor: Observations at a large academic medical system

Junyan Shi, Edwin G Lindo, Geoffrey S Baird, Bessie Young, Michael Ryan, J Ashley Jefferson, Rajnish Mehrotra, Patrick C Mathias, Andrew N Hoofnagle

From Science Direct: Changing from MDRD to CKD-EPINoRace could lead to a lower referral rate to nephrology. The distributions of creatinine and eGFR calculated with CKD-EPINoRace were not meaningfully different in Black and non-Black patients. Read the full article here.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0009898121001789

Learning critical Black history can change white perspectives on racism in health care

From UCLA:

Two-thirds of white Americans believe that Black Americans do not experience racism or racial inequities in health care.
UCLA psychologists exposed white study participants to the well-documented history of medical-related mistreatment of Black Americans.
Subsequently, white participants were more likely to adopt a new perspective and support policies aimed at reducing racial disparities in health care.

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/learning-black-history-can-change-perspectives-on-health

Advancing health equity with Illustrate Change

From Deloitte Digital: Currently, less than 5% of medical images show dark skin. Only 8% of medical illustrators identify as people of color. The Illustrate Change digital library, made possible by a grant from the Johnson & Johnson “Our Race to Health Equity” commitment, will house a collection of diverse medical illustrations across a range of health conditions. The library will continue to grow and evolve, reflecting a more representative patient population. The initial 25 images will represent 23 conditions across dermatology, maternal health, eye disease, oncology, general health, orthopedics, and hematology.

Read more at the original article here: https://www.deloittedigital.com/us/en/blog-list/2023/illustrate-change.html

Discrimination in LGBTQIA+ Health Care

From moneygeek.com:

Navigating the health care system isn’t easy. With complicated insurance terms, overworked doctors and year-long wait times to get appointments, seeing your doctor can be challenging. This difficulty increases tenfold for specific marginalized communities — such as the LGBTQIA+ community.

LGBTQIA+ patients face blatant discrimination in health care, including access to fewer providers and uninformed doctors. To reach a place of equitable health care for LGBTQIA+ individuals, much work still needs to be done. Proper training for doctors and medical staff and putting laws in place that protect the rights of LGBTQIA+ privacy are some ways health care can be improved.

In this guide, we’ll look at some LGBTQIA+ patients’ struggles, review equitable health care improvements and solutions and provide various resources for finding care.

“Lucky Medicine: Memoirs of a Black pediatric urologist”

Dr. Lester Thompson, a retired pediatric urologist and one of the first Black practitioners in the Pacific Northwest, offers an inspiring, personal look at Black student life at Indiana University in the early 1960s in his book. As a graduate of Indiana University School of Medicine, Dr. Thompson shares valuable insights that make this book a must-read for those interested in the medical field, particularly young people of color and aspiring Black medical professionals. Read more