The University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix is committed to the actionable steps as recommended by our college community to move toward dismantling racism and the barriers and deficits it creates for all. The scope of these ongoing efforts complement our Strategic Plan for Inclusive Excellence (PDF). Workgroups, led by institutional leaders, will be convened to operationalize and create accountability for each action step below:

Compositional Diversity

  1. Create a scholarship fund for medical students interested in serving the underserved Black/African American community.
  2. Conduct an annual review of the recruitment and admissions process, collaboratively guided by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and college leadership. Identify opportunities for improvement related to recruitment, training of reviewers and interviewers for unconscious bias, applicant screening criteria and admissions committee composition.
  3. Establish new and strengthen existing strategies to recruit and hire more Black and other underrepresented in medicine (URM) faculty, staff and leadership:
    • Require a diverse search committee composition with particular efforts to include Black individuals, women and additional URM groups.
    • Continue to utilize local and national posting sites and URM email listservs and networks — including the National Medical Association (NMA) and the Group on Diversity and Inclusion (GDI) listservs, as well as other others.
    • Provide unconscious bias training to all search committee members.
    • Underscore the value and desire to search for and include diverse candidates across all search committees.
    • Monitor gender and race/ethnicity for every applicant and review during each search committee meeting.
    • Identify and document the reason(s) why candidates were not hired and conduct annual diversity analysis of hiring practices and outcomes.
  4. Develop a plan for Graduate Medical Education (GME) diversity efforts in collaboration with GME Diversity Subcommittee.

Education and Research

  1. Launch a development campaign for an Endowed Chair of Health Justice and Equity Research. An endowed chair is a position permanently paid for with the revenue from an endowment fund specifically set up for that purpose. The required gift to establish an endowed chair is between $1 million – $2.5 million.
  2. Provide mandatory annual unconscious bias training for all faculty, students, staff, residents, fellows and postdocs.
  3. Create a plan for curricular integration of topics related to race, racism and SDOH in medicine that incorporates recommendations from the students’ statement and the Black alumni statement (PDF).

Culture/Climate

  1. Report the full range of efforts by departments, faculty and staff to advance Inclusive Excellence via annual departmental reviews, UA Vitae and Career Conversations.
  • Department/Unit:
    • Assess departmental diversity and inclusion efforts — utilizing the Continuous Diversity Improvement Matrix (PDF) and other tools.
    • Curate a narrative review of activities hosted both on and off campus.
    • Document the promotion rate of URM faculty.
    • Produce a recruitment and retention data review.
    • Conduct a GME data review that is representative of all programs.
    • Document mentoring efforts of faculty, residents/fellows and students.
  • Faculty and Staff – Complete at Least Three Hours Annually with Non-Exhaustive Examples Below:
    • Attend an Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion workshop or presentation.
    • Engage in a diversity culture/climate initiative (e.g. cultural awareness activity).
    • Assist in creating curricula on diversity and inclusion topics.
    • Recruit diverse candidates through professional and personal networks.
    • Serve on an Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee or as a member of a resource group (e.g. WIMS, Diversity Committee, Spectrum, etc.)
    • Engage in pipeline efforts (i.e. teaching, volunteering, recruiting with Scrubs Academy, Connect2STEM, Connect2Mentors, Basic Medical Sciences Internship, etc.)
  1. Create a director of Mentoring position to facilitate mentoring and career development for URM students.
  2. Support the formation of employee resource groups for faculty and staff of color and other groups.

Communications

  1. Issue a statement on the college's website recognizing racism as a public health issue in line with AAMC and AMA.
  2. Generate stories, campaigns, art installations that uplift Black and additional URM voices in medicine and society.