Action Plan 3: Equip Medical Schools and Teaching Hospitals and Health Systems to Become More Inclusive, Equitable Organizations

To accelerate discovery and improve health, academic medicine needs equitable and inclusive environments in which all faculty, staff, administrators, and learners feel welcome, safe, and valued.

Yet women and members of marginalized groups face systemic problems such as racism, bias, harassment, disrespect, and isolation. This action plan seeks to create more inclusive, equitable environments in medical schools and teaching hospitals, so they can better attract and advance a diverse workforce and improve the health of all people.

We’re taking a multifaceted approach to understanding and improving the experiences of learners, faculty, and staff in learning and workplace environments:

• We’re creating tools and resources to help members address systemic racism and to advance gender equity, including the Diversity, Inclusion, Culture, and Equity (DICE) Inventory and the Foundational Principles of Inclusion Excellence (FPIE) Toolkit and developing a roadmap of all of our culture and climate and health equity assessment tools including StandPoint Surveys, the Diversity Engagement Survey (DES), and the Health Equity Inventory.

• We invited interested participants in the Council of Deans to complete the DICE inventory to identify strengths and areas for improvement related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, demonstrate a collective commitment to sustained action and accountability within the council, and inform future resources to be developed by the AAMC. Results from this data collection will be published this fall.

• We’re undertaking research and scholarship to help member institutions assess and understand organizational performance in inclusion, including releasing a data snapshot on Childcare Offerings of U.S. Medical Schools During the COVID-19 Pandemic and a new report, Understanding and Addressing Sexual Harassment in Academic Medicine.

• We’re creating educational tools and informational resources to expand knowledge on inclusion and create equity-minded leaders and institutions, such as the completed webinar series within the Women of Color Initiative, the launch of the IDEAS Learning Series, and a new landing page of anti-racism resources. 

• We’re crafting training and leadership development to create more inclusive leaders in academic medicine.

We continue to build a holistic approach to address the cultural, behavioral, and systemic changes needed to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion in academic medicine. In the next months, look for the following tools, training, and resources:

• “Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Anti-racism (IDEAS)” Learning series.
• New research on Black men in medicine.
• “Restorative Justice in Academic Medicine” training scheduled for August 24-26, 2022.

There are multiple ways to get involved:

• Use the DICE Inventory, FPIE Toolkit, StandPoint Surveys, Diversity Engagement Survey (DES), and the Health Equity Inventory within your institution.

• Join us for the next IDEAS Learning Series webinars: "Using Inclusive Language in Scholarly Writing" (August 18, 2022 at 12:00 p.m. ET) and "Understanding and Addressing Sexual Harassment in Academic Medicine: A New AAMC Report" (August 24, 2022 at 12:00 p.m. ET)