What’s My Legislature Doing in My Classroom About Race and Health Equity?
Health professions education accreditors set national standards for higher education programs, including expectations for assuring the professional competencies of graduates, specific curricular content, and metrics such as diversity. For many professions, accreditation standards and profession-specific certification have long required addressing race, health equity, and inclusion for decades. In addition, the academic tradition of faculty governance of their own college’s specific programs and other curricular matters are time-honored.
More recently in response to the murder of George Floyd, important national conversations about race, racism, and anti-racism approaches have accelerated in all sectors of American life. For higher education, growing external influences, misperceptions, and questioning experts are impinging upon how professionals are educated. Increasingly there is pressure within states to limit the strategies available for these important conversations. This year, legislatures have passed or are considering laws to limit “critical race theory”, a specific introspective, pedagogical philosophy and method about race used for over thirty years. Yet, state discussions and laws call into a question a number of issues for higher education and health professions education.
This Courageous Conversation Café is intended to begin the discussion about the implications of the current environment on health professions education, interprofessional practice and education, and preparing health professionals and students for justice, diversity, health equity and inclusion today.
Join us for a courageous conversation as we explore what’s on your mind as a stakeholder in health and consider strategies toward positive action in the future.
For additional perspective on the topic, consider the following resources:
- Be Paranoid: Professors who Teach about Race Approach Fall with Anxiety (The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 13, 2021)
- Social-work students hurt by limits of education on race: Commentary by Darla Spence Coffey (Orlando Sentinel, July 5, 2021)