Where are we now? Evaluating the one year impact of an anti-racism curriculum review

Abstract

Purpose Undergraduate medical education has had a call to action to acknowledge racist practices that are impacting learners throughout their training. In 2020, our school performed a detailed curricular review and provided recommendations to address racism in the curriculum. Many schools have now undergone a similar curricular review process, but little is known about whether suggested antiracist curricular changes impact faculty teaching behavior or the overall curriculum. Material and Methods In 2021, as part of the medical school’s annual educational quality improvement process, course directors were required to answer a question about the changes they made to address racism in their courses based on recommendations provided the year prior from an antiracism curricular review. The documented changes were analyzed for themes and then organized by course and curricular year. These changes were compared with the suggested recommendations to analyze the number and types of changes implemented after one year. To evaluate student perceptions of change the general comments from academic years 2019–2021 were reviewed. Results After 1 year, approximately, 74% of our school’s 328 anti-racism curricular review recommendations were implemented in courses. Over 80% were implemented in curricular year 1. The greatest number of recommendations implemented were related to the theme of critiquing the strength of evidence in race-based medical practices. The least amount change was made around the theme of challenging the biologic notion of race. Conclusions An antiracism curricular review followed by an embedded continuous quality improvement process can be an effective approach to address racism in medical school curricula. Addressing racism in medical education requires medical schools to regularly identify curricular gaps, faculty needs and monitor their progress.