Medical Students Lead Program that Strives for Health Equity
Dr. Cathy Lazarus, Associate Dean for Students
Long before the Institute of Medicine's groundbreaking report, Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, LSU School of Medicine physicians and researchers recognized that health and disease varied by income, race, and ethnicity. Many created outreach programs that addressed and attempted to correct what they were seeing in their particular area.
The School of Medicine's efforts to address health equity grew alongside the national conversation surrounding vulnerable populations and social determinants of health. Today, schoolwide efforts to incorporate health equity run through every pillar of the long-range plan, reaching into the administrative, clinical, research, and education fronts.
Dr. Cathy Lazarus, associate dean for student affairs, and Dr. Robin English, assistant dean for undergraduate medical education, have taken the lead role in integrating health equity into the medical school curriculum. “Health disparities are real, complex, and multi-factorial. They do not exist in a vacuum. If our future healthcare providers are going to create a healthier future, they need to understand this,” Dr. Lazarus said.
A small group of students in 2017 strongly agreed with this sentiment and began passionately advocating for medical equity alongside leadership's efforts. They created what has become known as the Critical Consciousness in Medicine Project. These students took a critical look at how diversity and equity were covered in the curriculum and created a complementary student-led curriculum that is now included in the standard curriculum. Second-year students lead first-year students through two-hour sessions that tackle implicit bias, institutional and structural racism, health disparities, and the concept of privilege.
“These are difficult but critical conversations for our students to have,” Dr. Lazarus said. “If we aren't careful, we - as healthcare providers - run the risk of blaming individuals for their circumstances. Thankfully, today there is widespread consensus that health equity is critical to individual health but also the health and vitality of the country as a whole - although there is much work to be done to actually achieve this.”
Each year, first-year student leaders are recruited as small group leaders and are mentored to become the next year's session leaders. Sessions are developed in collaboration with faculty, including Drs. Lazarus, English and Angela McLean, who serves as co-director of the clinical sciences curriculum. These sessions also align with the Office of Undergraduate Medical Education's ongoing efforts to incorporate health disparities and social justice into the curriculum.
Student feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. One student said, “I learned quite a few new facts that sort of shocked me, which makes me feel like the impact of today's workshop will ‘stick' with me for a very long time in a good way.” Another student added, “I really enjoyed discussing ways in which we can begin to address our biases. The examples from clinicians were also really helpful as they provided real world examples.”