Abby L. Spencer, MD, MS, FACP, Professor and Vice Chair for Education, Academy of Educators Director, GME Program Director Boot Camp Director at WashU Department of Medicine – Division of General Medicine and Geriatrics, and co-investigator, Janice L. Hanson, PhD, EdS, MH, recently received a grant under the Building Trust Through Diversity, Health Care Equity, and Inclusion in Internal Medicine Training grant program. This program is coordinated with American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation.
This grant, part of a $400,000 national initiative funded by the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine (AAIM), the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), the ABIM Foundation, the American College of Physicians (ACP), and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. This project is a pivotal step toward fostering a more inclusive and trustworthy health care system.
These grants will fund innovative projects aimed at improving health equity training and addressing systemic biases in medical care. For example, Vanderbilt University Medical Center will create simulation training to improve care for LGBTQ+ patients, while The University of Chicago will develop a curriculum to tackle clinician bias toward patients with sickle cell disease.
“Pursuing Equity: Creating a Novel Faculty Development Series to Enhance Equitable Assessment and Delivery of Clinical Feedback” is of key importance to our Department of Medicine and our School of Medicine. Educational equity, particularly as it relates to building trust in the learning environment and providing meaningful assessments and feedback devoid of bias to our learners, forms an essential foundation of excellence in education. Our department is deeply committed to safe learning environments that promote belonging and best practices in assessment, feedback, and professional development.
Dr. Spencer shares, “The focus of this grant is to design and implement a faculty development series to support the teaching faculty’s efforts to provide equitable clinical assessment and feedback. This series hopes to be a welcome addition to our school’s robust faculty development programming in this area and holds promise for helping us reach our educational equity goals. We anticipate that their work will lead to cascading enhancements to culture and feedback across all of our divisions of internal medicine and ultimately across the medical school community and beyond.”
