Anti-racist recommendations in medical education journals in 2023: A content analysis

Although racism has received growing attention in medical education in recent years, there remains a lack of clarity about the central recommendations for policy and practice. This study synthesises anti-racist recommendations from the literature to address this gap.

We searched twenty-four medical education journals to identify articles published in the year 2023 focusing primarily on race and racism. Policy and practice recommendations from these articles were analysed using content analysis.

Across the 107 included articles, anti-racist recommendations were organised into seven themes: (1) Increasing cross-cultural and historical research; (2) Changing culture and mission of institutions; (3) Enhancing patient and community involvement; (4) Developing greater community solidarity; (5) Redesigning student and faculty recruitment; (6) Expanding antiracist content in curricula; (7) Reforming assessment and course evaluation.

Recommendations to tackle racism in medical education focus both on symbolic changes that send signals to stakeholders such as rewriting mission statements, and on structural changes that rewire existing systems to make them fairer, such as redefining recruitment criteria. Medical education leaders can consider whether their interventions align with these recommendation categories, and medical education researchers can critically interrogate whether they should be refined as geopolitical and sociocultural contexts rapidly shift.