Combatting Fragmentation: Lessons Learned from an Integrative Approach to Teaching Health Equity

While social medicine education is a long-established field of study within medical education,¹ implementation has historically been through elective coursework making integration, assessment, and evaluation challenging. The launch of the novel Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine Gateway curriculum, with guiding principles that required curriculum content to be integrated, learning-centered, sustainable, competency-based, and outcomes-oriented, supported the creation of the Health Equity and Justice (HEJ) curriculum. This innovative curriculum adhered to the guiding principles, addressed the current limitations in social medicine education, and allowed for the flexibility that social medicine education requires. Additionally, the Gateway HEJ curriculum presented an opportunity to explore novel ways of assessing medical students, as well as illuminating additional opportunities for faculty development to ensure fidelity to the HEJ content. This paper includes the process of development as well as the lessons learned, limitations, and future plans for iterative improvements to the curriculum.