Redesigning the Box: A Self-Study Tool to Enhance Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Interprofessional Programming and Initiatives

Over the last two years, staff and faculty members of a university Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education’s Racial and Social Justice Task Force (RSJT) have worked together to extend our systems thinking relative to interprofessional collaboration and our understanding of effective teamwork to examine and dismantle systemic injustice in our individual and team practices. To aid in this work, the team created a curriculum self-study tool, intended to guide critical thinking and facilitate idea generation around issues of racial and social justice within and across the Center’s interprofessional student programs. Specifically, the tool encourages users to reflect on opportunities and strengths within each program relative to diverse representation, health disparities, and assumptions and stereotypes, and to enact corresponding changes. Its use is meant to enable creation of an action plan to ensure that the Center’s staff and faculty are explicitly aware of and working toward racial and social justice in all our endeavors. This process includes feedback and input first from the full RSJT and then the Center’s entire interprofessional faculty and staff team.

This seminar will directly address the theme of “Interprofessional Collaboration to Address Health Equity, Racism, and Bias” by introducing participants to the RSJT, its work, and the creation and use of the curriculum self-study tool to address issues of diverse representation, health disparities, and assumptions and stereotypes in interprofessional student programming, as described above. After this introduction, workshop presenters will provide an example of the application of the tool using one of the Center’s programs. Attendees will then use the tool to examine and reflect on an activity, event, course, or curriculum in which they are engaged. The seminar will end with a discussion of attendee reactions to using the tool during the session and next steps for moving forward. Ultimately, we hope the tool will serve as a resource to help raise users’ confidence in their abilities to address issues of racial and social justice, foster more inclusive learning environments and build stronger, more trusting teams.

After attending this session, the learner will be able to:

-Discuss the intersection of interprofessional learning and anti-racism in higher education.

-Explain the rationale for incorporating and examining issues of racial and social justice within interprofessional activities, events, courses and curricula.

-Apply a self-study tool to enhance existing activities, events, courses and curricula within one’s own teaching portfolio, relative to issues of racial and social justice.

Learners will be able to apply the tool during and after the seminar, resulting in immediately actionable knowledge and tools that they can use in their educational practice, including confidence and self-efficacy in working with interprofessional team members to raise and address issues of racial and social justice across interprofessional learning environments, create brave educational spaces, and build trusting, interdependent teams.

Active learning strategies include:

-Applying the self-study tool to an activity, event, course, or curriculum with which learners are involved.

-After using the self-study tool, reflecting individually, then discussing reactions in pairs and groups using a 1-2-4-All model.