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

Editor’s Note: In honor of #ThrowbackThursday, we are highlighting this 2015 blog post from our archives. For more on strategies aimed at improving population health and health equity, check out “Advancing Population Health at Academic Medical Centers: A Case Study and Framework for an Emerging Field” in the June 2019 issue of Academic Medicine. 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 a...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Tags: Featured Guest Perspective academic health centers health disparities health equity medical students population health Source Type: blogs