Increasing Inclusion, Diversity, Antiracism, and Equity With a Medical School Curriculum Quality Improvement Project

Abstract

The students at Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine (MCASOM) wrote a call to action to medical school leadership in June 2020. The students requested help in navigating socio–political barriers that affected one another and contributed to healthcare inequities and mistrust. Using the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) tool to assess cultural competence training, our team evaluated the baseline 2017–2018 MCASOM curriculum. There were 254 learning objectives, of which 43 (17%) were related to inclusion, diversity, antiracism, and equity (I-DARE). Mirroring the concerns of the students, the findings identified minimal content about antiracism and inclusion. By applying DMAIC principles for quality and process improvement, we aimed to increase the number of taught learning objectives about I-DARE content for the first-year and second-year medical students by 100%, from 43 to 86 objectives, without adversely affecting student satisfaction and true attendance. To address the underlying causes, we launched a virtual, multisite I-DARE medical school course and doubled the number of I-DARE–taught learning objectives from 43 to 107 (149%), compared with the baseline. The program evaluation review revealed that the students were self-reflective and provided a spectrum of experiences regarding the I-DARE course.