Earlier this month, the School of Medicine Office for Diversity and Inclusion hosted a follow-up Racial Justice Town Hall.

During this session, moderators and panelists discussed how the Racial Justice Priorities were developed, the improvements that have been made, and what the future still holds.

Panelists included leadership, a School of Medicine staff representative, and ODI Faculty Association representatives.

Selwyn Vickers, M.D., FACS, dean of the School of Medicine
Mona Fouad, M.D., MPH, senior associate dean for Diversity and Inclusion
Merida Grant, Ph.D., Black/African American
Fernando Ovalle, M.D., Hispanic and Latin American
Michele Kong, M.D., Asian American and Pacific Islander
Carolyn Maddox, UAB School of Medicine staff

For those who were unable to attend, you can view the full video below.

During the town hall, attendees were encouraged to ask questions. Due to time restraints, we were unable to answer all of the questions live, but have included the answers here.

Question: The issue seems to be retention more than recruitment with URiM medical students. What are we doing to retain more URiM students?

Answer: The Medical Student Section (MSS) is equipped to help support students with tutors, study methodology, and a host of other programs. Moreover, the ODI suite—which can be found in Volker Hall suite 109—is a safe place where our URiM students can gather and support one another.

Question: There is a serious minimalization in regards to mental health among black employees, how can we address this moving forward?

Answer: The starting point would be to identify the specific mental health needs of black employees, then use this data to design a response. Using a feasible approach, such as a survey, we could identify the mental health needs of black employees at UAB—keeping in mind that the needs of staff and faculty may be very different.

ODI will work with Faculty and Staff Diversity Liaisons to identify and address the needs of our URiM workforce. We will raise the issue of mental health with our liaisons to gain their input and insight about specific needs and appropriate response.

Until we have a specific plan in place, remember that the African-American/Black Faculty Association is a wonderful resource. There are also other UAB-specific resources available, such as https://www.uab.edu/humanresources/home/wellness https://www.uab.edu/humanresources/home/eacc

Question: How is UABSOM working meaningfully to make SOM-wide curricular changes and accountability measures that focus on intentional anti-oppression/anti-racism benchmarks that align with the progress already underway at peer and aspirational institutions? Is there pre-clinical curriculum that teach students how to care for their minority patients? As well as being aware of biases and unique disease presentations.

Answer: We are working with the UAB School of Education to evaluate our existing curriculum and opportunities to enhance or add material relative to health disparities while removing any content which could be perceived as racist (e.g GFR calculation). This process is ongoing and we plan to formally assess these changes moving forward.

As we move through the process, we are reviewing peer and aspirational institutions to inform our plans.

Regarding bias training, we have included this for all students.

Question: What pragmatic, intentional efforts are being made to reverse the discrepancy between Black SOM graduates (roughly 3% per year) and Black representation in AL (roughly 30%), especially Black male graduates? And, simultaneously, what efforts are being made to increase visibility and representation of Latino/a and Indigenous Alabama SOM graduates?

Answer: The UAB School of Medicine is committed to diversifying the medical school student body and physician workforce. Through a variety of pipeline programs, partnerships, and recruitment efforts, the percentage of underrepresented students in medicine at UABSOM has nearly doubled over the past five years. For the medical school class entering this year, 19% of the student body identifies as underrepresented in medicine. The largest increase has been students who identify as Black or African American, going from 5% of the incoming student body in 2014 to 10% of the student body in 2021. While there is still much work to be done to recruit and retain a student body and physician workforce that is representative of our patient population, the UABSOM has made steady improvement over the last several years and is dedicated to diversity and inclusion.

Example pipeline and recruitment programs include SHPEP, Blaze to MD, Virtual Immersion Pre-Med (VIP) Program, UAB RAMP UP, STEP UP, Partnerships with HBCU’s, SURE-GM, PARAdiGM, PRSTP and CRiSP, PRISM, and SURE.

Question: In addition to the various reporting mechanisms, is there any place where we can have more casual and honest conversations about our experiences?

Answer: These conversations would be perfect for our Faculty Association meetings. Currently, FAs are meeting via Zoom, but as soon as it is safe to do so, they will begin meeting in person. We encourage open and honest conversations among association members. If you are looking to join, please reach out to one of the leaders listed below.

Black/ African American Association
• Farah Lubin, Ph.D., Associate Professor in Neurobiology- flubin@uab.edu
• Danielle Powell, M.D., Associate Professor in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation- dkpowell@uab.edu

Hispanic Association
• Marcela Frazier, O.D., MSPH, Associate Professor of Ophthalmology- mfrazier@uab.edu
• Marisa Marques, M.D., Professor, UAB Department of Pathology- mmarques@uabmc.edu
• Fernando Ovalle, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Endocrinology, Diabetes, & Metabolism- fovalle@uab.edu

Asian American and Pacific Islander Faculty Association
• Michele Kong, M.D., Professor of Pediatric Critical Care- mkong@uab.edu
• Herbert Chen, M.D., FACS, Chair of the Department of Surgery- hchen@uabmc.edu

In addition to faculty associations, our Sr. Assoc. Dean for ODI Dr. Mona Fouad maintains an open-door policy and is willing to have informal conversations related to experiences of mistreatment. Likewise, the ODI Executive Director Dr. Steven Hairston is also a SOM equity advisor and available to talk with you.

We are in the process of planning the appointment of additional equity advisors, which will make it easier for our SOM workforce to reach out to talk with someone about such issues.

Lastly, please remember that the ODI has a new page on our website, Reporting Channels. From this one page, you can review your main options for reporting mistreatment or requesting a more informal conversation.

Question: Can you say if the Huntsville campus have a representative and if so who is that person?

Answer: In our most recent blog post, we announced the inaugural group of staff diversity liaisons. We are excited to work hand-in-hand with these individuals to ensure ODI’s mission and vision is being executed in their respective areas. As a part of the UAB SOM, Huntsville’s Regional Medical Campus also has a representative—Kimberly Berger (kberger@uabmc.edu).

We are working toward having a faculty representative on the Huntsville campus. Once one has been identified, the Diversity Liaisons’ page will be updated with their name and contact information.