On the Journey to Achieve Health Equity: Teaching the Next Generation of Physicians

By: Cristina M. Gonzalez, MD, MEd, associate professor of clinical medicine, Department of Medicine, Division of Hospital Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York I have worked on minority issues, equity, and social justice for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I grew up in Pennsylvania on a small farm, while most of my family lived in the Bronx. From an early age I could see the systemic inequities in education and opportunity, even if I couldn’t describe them as such. As a junior medical school faculty member, I realized that I wanted to improve minority health by educating the next generation of physicians. My co-course director, Aaron Fox, MD, MS, and I developed a thirteen-session health disparities elective for first-year medical students. The curriculum covers three main content areas: background, provider contributions to health disparities, and systemic contributions to health disparities. We used various teaching methods, including didactic and multimedia presentations, reflective discussions, and active learning skill-building. Using a pre-/posttest assessment, we found that we were able to increase our students’ knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported confidence in addressing provider and systemic contributions to health disparities. Our instructional strategies and the results of our program evaluation can be found in a recent Academic Medicine article. We decided to address both provider and systemic causes of health disparities in o...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Tags: Featured Guest Perspective albert einstein college of medicine elective health disparities health equity Source Type: blogs