An Anti-Racism and Equity Initiative Improves Residency Educational Conferences

Graduate medical education curricula may reinforce systemic inequities and bias, thus contributing to health disparities. Curricular interventions and evaluation measures are needed to increase trainee awareness of bias and known inequities in health care.

This study sought to improve the content of core noontime internal medicine residency educational conferences by implementing the Department of Medicine Anti-Racism and Equity (DARE) educational initiative.

DARE best practices were developed from available anti-racism and equity educational materials. Volunteer trainees and faculty in the department of medicine of a large urban academic medical center were recruited and underwent an hourlong training to utilize DARE best practices to coach faculty on improving the anti-racist and equity content of educational conferences. DARE coaches then met with faculty to review the planned 2021-2022 academic year (AY) lectures and facilitate alignment with DARE best practices. A rubric was created from DARE practices and utilized to compare pre-intervention (AY21) and post-intervention (AY22) conferences.

Using the DARE best practices while coaching increased the anti-racism and equity content from AY21 to AY22 (total rubric score mean [SD] 0.16 [1.19] to 1.38 [1.39]; P=.001; possible scores -4 to +5), with 75% (21 of 28) of AY22 conferences showing improvement. This included increased diversity of photographs, discussion of the racial or ethnic makeup of research study participants, appropriate use of race in case vignettes, and discussion of the impact of racism or bias on health disparities.

Training coaches to implement DARE best practices improved the anti-racism and equity content of existing noontime internal medicine residency educational conferences.