Health Workforce Equity Summit
The Mullan Health Workforce Equity Summit is an annual event that convenes stakeholders, policymakers, scholars, and the public on important and edgy topics relating to health disparities, equity, and the workforce.
10/29/20: Structural Racism and Health Profession’s Education
This summit focused on priorities and strategies to increase diversity in the health workforce. It provided an overview of structural racism and how its institutionalization within our country’s history and law has hindered access to quality education for racial minorities. In addition, panels 1) focused on initiatives and opportunities to create better educational pathways for minority students, 2) explored the experience of health professions students and faculty of color and how to improve their experience, and 3) focused on policy changes to promote equity.
The keynote speaker was Dayna Bowen Matthew, JD, PhD, Dean of the George Washington University Law School and author of Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care.
Panelists included:
The keynote speaker was Dayna Bowen Matthew, JD, PhD, Dean of the George Washington University Law School and author of Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care.
Panelists included:
- Sonal Batra, MD, Assistant Professor, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity, George Washington University - View Slides
- Kenya Beard, EdD, CNE, AGACNP-BC, ANEF, FAAN, Dean, Nursing & Health Sciences, Nassau Community College
- Brigit Carter, PhD, MSN, Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion, Duke University School of Nursing - View Slides
- Maria Portela Martinez, MD, MPH, Chief, Family Medicine Section, Department of Emergency Medicine, Medical Faculty Associates, George Washington University
- Marc Nivet, EdD, MBA, Executive Vice President, Institutional Advancement, UT Southwestern Medical Center
- LaShyra “Lash” Nolen, Second-Year Medical Student and President for the Class of 2023, Harvard Medical School
- Demicha Rankin, MD, Associate Dean for Admission, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, Ohio State University College of Medicine
- Robert Rock, MD, Family Physician, Department of Family and Social Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center - View Slides
- Valerie Romero-Leggott, MD, Vice Chancellor and Diversity & Inclusion Executive Officer, HSC Endowed Professorship for Equity in Health, Professor of Family & Community Medicine, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center - View Slides
- Maria Soto-Greene, MD, MS-HPEd, FACP, Executive Vice Dean, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Director, The Hispanic Center of Excellence
- Efrain Talamantes, MD, MBA, MSc, Chief Operating Officer, AltaMed Health Services and Co-founder of MiMentor.org
introduction
keynote speaker
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SUMMARY
Keynote speaker Dayna Bowen Matthew, JD, PhD, lays the Summit’s groundwork with an overview of structural racism and how its institutionalization within our country’s history and law has hindered access to quality education for racial minorities. Mapping out the multiple pathways by which educational attainment enhances health, she drives home a simple point: without education, one cannot be healthy. Dr. Matthew emphasizes how structural racism has created barriers to education for racial minorities, thus driving and perpetuating health disparities and preventing minority populations from attaining the favorable health outcomes that are inextricably linked with educational attainment. |
Panel 1: Creating Better Educational Pathways
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SUMMARY
Panel 1 focuses on initiatives and opportunities to create better educational pathways for minority students. Panelists describe how enacted efforts starting early and continuing throughout the educational pipeline can help grow and sustain a diverse health workforce to impactfully address health disparities. Promising strategies aimed at different points in the educational pipeline are discussed, including targeted recruitment and pipeline programs, mentorship, holistic admissions and implicit bias training for admissions gatekeepers, and community partnerships to promote the advancement of sustainable K through 20 opportunities. |
Panel 2: changing the experience of students and faculty of color in health professions schools
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SUMMARY
Panel 2 explores the experience of health professions students and faculty of color and how to improve their experience. Panelists discuss the integration of structural racism in the formal and hidden curriculum, the urgency in calling out and mitigating false beliefs that perpetuate racism in education, moving beyond diverse learning environments to equitable schools, and holding academic leaders accountable for promoting diversity and inclusion. Second year medical student LaShyra “Lash” Nolen shares her experience with the medical education pipeline and the inequities of a system that awards merit and inclusion based on achievements tied to socioeconomic status. She encourages schools to acknowledge the variation in and assign value to the lived experiences of prospective health professions students from all backgrounds and expand recruitment practices and admissions standards accordingly. |
panel 3: motivating policy change to promote equity
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SUMMARY
The Summit’s final panel focuses on policy changes to promote equity. Robert Rock, MD emphasizes a need to scrutinize institutional policies hindering the very aims they aspire to achieve, particularly around faculty diversity. By focusing on the “minority tax” placed on faculty of color when they are disproportionately burdened with leading institutional diversity efforts, he explains how misguided policies can perpetuate the oppression of racial minorities and drive them away from academia. Next, Sonal Batra, MD, MST explains the regulatory role of accreditation bodies in advancing diversity and inclusion and shares research critically evaluating health professions education standards that shows wide variation and opportunity for improvement across accreditation standards. Dr. Batra notes that the creation of meaningful standards to raise the floor of diversity and inclusion expectations for schools can serve as a powerful lever for advancing racial equity in health professions education. Finally, Maria Portela Martinez, MD, MPH, showcases empirical research efforts spotlighting the underrepresentation of minorities in the health workforce. She notes the enhancing power of research in bringing transparency to diversity efforts and its potential to serve as a catalyst for accountability and change. |
Next steps: developing actionable recommendations
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SUMMARY
Concluding remarks and next steps are summarized by Toyese Oyeyemi, MPH, CHES, Director of the Beyond Flexner Alliance. Mr. Oyeyemi reminds the audience of the Summit objectives to identify the institutional and structural factors in health professions education that hinder racial equity and the comprehensive strategies needed to dismantle these barriers. He notes systemic, durable change will require a broad-based, collective, multi-stakeholder effort to create the research and policy action agenda needed to transform the curriculum and culture of health professions education. Mr. Oyeyemi emphasizes that deconstructing barriers to racial equity is a shared responsibility to which academic leaders must be held accountable. He identifies levers of change at the institutional, regulatory systems, and federal policy levels to incentivize diversity in health professions education and concludes the program with several solutions-oriented attendee comments. |
06/18/19: Reproductive Health in Crisis? What Workforce Strategies are Needed?
This summit examined the landscape of reproductive health services and policies that threaten access to appropriate and comprehensive care in the United States. Representatives of various reproductive health institutions focused on pipeline and distribution issues, as well as, the challenges of recruitment and retention of providers. Frontline workforce perspectives included an overview of residency programs focused on the integration and enhancement of family planning in training; the legislative barriers and the importance of advocacy for reproductive rights in the workplace; and the consequences that restrictive policies have on population outcomes.
This summit was a dialogue between reproductive health leaders and the Institute’s leading workforce experts. Dr. Patricia Pittman, Director of the Mullan Institute, and Dr. Candice Chen, Principle Investigator Mullan Institute moderated the panels. Panelists included:
This summit was a dialogue between reproductive health leaders and the Institute’s leading workforce experts. Dr. Patricia Pittman, Director of the Mullan Institute, and Dr. Candice Chen, Principle Investigator Mullan Institute moderated the panels. Panelists included:
- Jessica Marcella, VP of Advocacy & Communications, National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA)
- Allison Whitney, MPH Director of Strategic Initiatives with the Consortium of Abortion Providers Services, Planned Parenthood
- Amna Dermish, MD, MSc, Medical Director, Planned Parenthood Greater Texas
- Nomsa Khalfani, PhD, Senior VP of Programs and Strategic Initiatives, Essential Access Health
- Uta Landy, PhD, National Director, Kenneth J. Ryan Residency Training Program and the Fellowship in Family Planning, Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health
- Katherine Simmonds, PhD, MPH, RN, WHNP-BC, Assistant Professor, Track Coordinator of the Women’s Health and Adult Gerontology/Women’s Health NP Specialties MGH Institute of Health Professions