Mission: Our mission is to pursue excellence in medicine at UAB by cultivating an accepting and affirming environment for all in the areas of education, research, and patient care—while enhancing efforts in recruitment, career development, and retention of employees and students.
Vision: We aim to be a national leader for fostering a collaborative environment that welcomes and celebrates all people.
We aspire to:
- Build an institution free from discrimination of any kind
- Create excellence by cultivating diversity
- Enhance the recruitment, career development, and retention of students, trainees, and faculty from underrepresented populations
- Promote education that improves health equity for all
Racial Justice Priorities
- Priority 1: Develop metrics for the department chairs to show advancement in diversity and inclusion
- Priority 2: Develop and implement an accountability system to address microaggressions, harassment, bias, and racism within the School of Medicine
- Add anti retaliation statement to reporting resource
- Develop a resource to identify and highlight reporting options
- Establish annual racial justice listening forum with the School of Medicine Dean
- Provide required training in cultural bias and anti-racism for supervisors and leadership, and faculty
- Priority 3: Improve support and recognition of URiM and female faculty
- Establish the URiM Professional Excellence Award in teaching, research, and service at the minority faculty reception (complete)
- Enhance visibility of minority faculty associations (website, newsletters, etc.)
- Formalize framework for a mentoring program for medical students
- Compile a list of faculty willing to mentor
- Priority 4: Increase support and programming for professional advancement of staff
- Create Office for Diversity and Inclusion staff liaison group
- Develop baseline demographic picture by race, ethnicity, and gender (position level and time in position)
- Work with HR to identify mentoring opportunities and career pathways
- Priority 5: ImproveOffice for Diversity and Inclusion website and enhance its visibility
- Improve visibility of Office for Diversity and Inclusion on website
- Priority 6: Address faculty pay inequities based on race or ethnicity
- Determine racial/ethnicity pay equity
- Process for reconciliation of inequities, if shown
Programs
We believe that the next generation of physicians should reflect the growing diversity of our surrounding community and country. We host pipeline programs designed to increase diversity in the healthcare workforce by exposing typically underrepresented students in medicine to various healthcare professions. These programs include the UAB Research in Aging through Mentorship and Practice—Undergraduate Program (RAMP-UP), Summer Health Professions Education Program (SHPEP) and Short-Term Research experience for Under-Represented Persons (STEP-UP), each geared toward undergraduate college students.
Faculty Associations
We take an active role in recruiting faculty from diverse backgrounds. As we continue to bring more people from underrepresented groups to the School of Medicine, our faculty associations play a crucial part in cultivating an institutional climate that supports and nurtures their professional development.
To facilitate this, underrepresented in medicine leaders from across UAB have helped create two faculty associations, Hispanic/Latinx and Black/African American, bringing our mission and vision to life.
Diversity Dashboard
The diversity dashboard is a resource that allows users to quickly and easily gather diversity information about each of the departments within the School of Medicine. Are you looking for the gender breakdown of all Black or African American faculty in pediatrics? Maybe you’re interested in seeing a more linear view of how many Asian assistant professors there were in 2016 versus today. Either way, the diversity dashboard is where you will find answers.
The Common Thread
To encourage collective participation in the Office for Diversity and Inclusion's mission, we have created Common Thread modules that can be viewed by individuals, groups, or departments. Through a series of four videos, viewers can learn how to make others around them feel included, listed to, acknowledged, and accepted.