The two of us first met in July, 2020, when we were asked to serve as inaugural co-directors of the University of California, Riverside, School of Medicine’s new Health Equity, Social Justice, and Anti-Racism (HESJAR) curricular initiative. Health equity, social justice, and anti-racism are important concepts, but they can easily degenerate into little more than buzz words. Our challenge was to transform those six words into a focused, integrated, and transformative learning experience for our students.
All posts by Dr. Carlos E. Cortes, Dr. Adwoa Osei
Diversity and Speech Part 31: Health Equity – by Carlos Cortés and Adwoa Osei
In July, 2020, the two of us met for the first time as inaugural co-directors of the University of California, Riverside, School of Medicine’s new Health Equity, Social Justice, and Anti-Racism (HESJAR) curricular initiative. Beginning with our initial conversations it became clear that addressing speech — physician speech, patient speech, medical school speech — would be central to our journey.
For an entire year (2020-2021) we planned. This involved reading, particularly about efforts at other medical schools. It also involved listening: to students; to other faculty and staff; and particularly through a series of community conversations in which medical students interviewed local residents about their experiences with the health care system. Those conversations deeply informed our curriculum development.
Continue reading Diversity and Speech Part 31: Health Equity – by Carlos Cortés and Adwoa Osei
Diversity and Speech Part 23: Health Equity – by Carlos E. Cortés and Adwoa Osei
In July, 2020, the two of us met for the first time as inaugural co-directors of the University of California, Riverside, School of Medicine’s new Health Equity, Social Justice, and Anti-Racism (HESJAR) curricular initiative. The school handed us those six words. The rest was up to us.
We started by looking and listening. We looked at what other medical schools had done. While we found some useful ideas, this strategy had built-in limitations. No other medical school that we encountered had triangulated those three intersecting but disparate ideas: health equity; social justice; and anti-racism. We had to address all three and integrate them into a coherent curriculum.
Continue reading Diversity and Speech Part 23: Health Equity – by Carlos E. Cortés and Adwoa Osei
Diversity and Speech Part 14: Health Equity – by Carlos Cortés, Adwoa Osei
Completing her second year as a pediatrics professor at the University of California, Riverside, Adwoa was focused on providing clinical training for her medical students. A retired UCR history professor, Carlos had no way of imagining that he would soon be joining the staff of a medical school. .
Then the UCR School of Medicine decided to establish a new required curricular thread on Health Equity, Social Justice, and Anti-Racism. Shortly after that, the School asked Adwoa and Carlos to become co-directors of the thread in order to get it started.
It was decision time for the two of us. Still at an early stage of her medical teaching career, Adwoa had numerous obligations. Experienced in health care cultural competence training, Carlos had been giving annual workshops on that topic to UCR’s incoming medical students. But establishing an entire curricular thread? That was a challenge. But also an opportunity. We couldn’t turn it down. Continue reading Diversity and Speech Part 14: Health Equity – by Carlos Cortés, Adwoa Osei