"Returning to Our Values: How to Continue DEIA Efforts in an Ever-Changing Landscape"
Cleveland Piggott, MD, MPH, is a co-author on this article.
Successful strategies presented include:
- Holistic admissions: Holistic review for admissions, focused on standardized behavioral questions and signaling, while hiding academic information. The example presented created a “CV Score” that uses items such as community college/associate degree, non-English language fluency, military service, other career, additional degrees to create a score that provides a more holistic view of an applicant.
- Advocacy and protection of admissions processes: Lobbying against “Do No Harm” legislation and the EDUCATE Act to restrict DEIA education in medical school, educating a board on the value of holistic admissions as described above, having a purposeful admissions committee, and ensuring family medicine representation on this committee.
- Language and job description changes: Changing roles and titles to reflect a broader position that aligns with other organizational priorities (eg, identifying and training physician candidates who are likely to serve local urban underserved and rural communities), instead of focusing specifically on DEIA initiatives.
- Working within the parameters of the law: If anti-DEIA laws have already been passed, move forward by continuing to build relationships (eg, wherever needed to form alliances and creatively co-create solutions where possible such as with legislators, health systems leaders, etc), identifying where there are overlapping priorities, and focusing on what is allowed to continue to meet the needs of patients and communities; for example, referencing socioeconomic status. Anti-DEIA laws may not inhibit federal funding, enabling working within the confines of state laws while continuing advocacy.
