The Government of Canada has launched a call for proposals to address gender-based violence through promising practices and community-based research.
This funding opportunity aims to fund projects that will develop, put in place, and evaluate or scale up promising practices to strengthen the gender-based violence sector. It will also fund research projects that build knowledge to help address the needs of specific groups that are at risk of gender-based violence or are underserved when they experience it.
Applications for internships with the Western Heads East program are now open! This is a great opportunity to gain internship experience while assisting with social enterprise and health sustainability initiatives in Africa. Check out the impact of the program over the past 20th years in this Western News article!
Most internships take place in the Summer of 2023, but it is possible to apply for an internship at any time of the year. With a 90-day commitment, interns can expect to:
Practice sustainable business and social enterprise skills
Collaborate on community kitchens and women empowerment projects
Promote awareness to Western University’s community about health sustainability in East Africa
Rise engagement on social media and in local communities
How to Apply?
Students that will have completed their second year of studies and that are at least 18 years old by the time of internship placement are welcome to apply. This program is also open to graduate students.
Interested students are encouraged to visit the Western Heads East website or check out the Instagram page to learn more about the internship and the WHE mission and interns’ experience. Students are encouraged to contact the program coordinator Maria Rodriguez (mrodri89@uwo.ca) for further information.
by Hooria Haider, Western University, Commuity Engaged Learning student, Health Sciences, Honours Specialization in Health Sciences with Biology
Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
THE PROBLEM
“Racism is often manifested with more subtlety than violent verbal or physical attacks. It can be implied through actions as well as attitudes and through a lack of consideration to such things as safety and comfort of others deemed undeserving”[1].
In the age of re-examining the structures, policies and frameworks that our political and social safety nets and services are built on, there has been a newfound focus on medical education. Healthcare is a vital service that every Canadian has an equal right to, however, as we become more conscious of implicit bias, and microaggressions in healthcare settings, there is an immediate need to proactively address these issues at the earliest steps of healthcare professional training. Thus, in order to create a new generation of physicians who provide equitable and culturally safe care, in recent years, medical schools have started to implement a more thorough and stakeholder-informed curriculum. Because this is a relatively new development, studies and new seminars and programs are continuously being implemented, evaluated and updated.
“Formal medical school curricula often espouse the value of equity, yet the hidden curriculum unfortunately sometimes conveys discrimination and unfair treatment,” says Michael Devlin, MD at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons[2].
WHERE ARE WE AT?
In light of newfound attention to this truth, efforts in Canadian and American Medical schools have started to actively incorporate an EDID curriculum, that is, curriculum that provides students with active strategies on how to approach problems, recognize bias/ microaggressions, deliver equitable care and uphold equity, diversity, Inclusion and decolonization (EDID).
In researching some of the studies done and curricula starting to be implemented in medical schools across Canada and the US, I have found some promising work. One school created a case-based curriculum following a communication framework to teach students to identify RDM (racism, discrimination, microaggressions) in both the relationship between medical professionals and also between physicians and their patients[3]. Evaluation of this curriculum found that it yielded positive results as student reported feeling empowered and more equipped with tools to address RDM when they face it in clinical situations. In addition to this, there has been an added effort to hear the voices of those who experience inequity in healthcare in Canada. One notable example of this is ‘The Indigenous Health Specialty in Postgraduate Medical Education (PGME) Steering Committee Education Guide’[4]. This is an in-depth document created by the Royal College of Physicians of Ontario and informed by a committee of Indigenous leaders, scholars and educators. This guide provides strategic guidance on how to implement Indigenous health pillars into curriculum and how to engage Indigenous partner organizations in an effort to decolonialize the healthcare sector as a whole. Additionally, this document provides insight into what Indigenous peoples need from physicians and explains the many roles and responsibilities of a physician when treating their communities.
FINAL THOUGHTS
After my glimpse into the growing literature and efforts towards EDID in medicine through tackling curriculum, I have come upon mixed feelings. Indeed, research regarding the inequities themselves is booming and coming into the light; topics such as implicit bias, disability studies and decolonization in a healthcare context are becoming common subjects of studies and learning programs. However, what is being done with the burgeoning research appears to be experiencing a lag in the process of being incorporated into mainstream medical curricula. The field feels as though it is in a perpetual state of workshopping, and has not yet reached the operationalized curriculum stage.
My hope is that the field of active implementation of the EDID curriculum in medical school continues to grow faster and becomes a more mainstream principle of the profession from the very beginning of training, or even when assessing medical school applicants. In the end, a dichotomy appears in my feelings: I am proud and hopeful for the work being done, but remain, in a sense, unsatisfied and anticipatory of an increase in actual action taken, policies implemented and syllabi altered with this research.
[1]Phillips-Beck et al., “Confronting Racism within the Canadian Healthcare System: Systemic Exclusion of First Nations from Quality and Consistent Care,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17 (2020): 3, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17228343
[3] Neves da Silva et al., “What Happened and Why: Responding to Racism, Discrimination, and Microaggressions in the Clinical Learning Environment,” MedEdPORTAL(2022), https://doi.org/10.15766/mep_2374-8265.11280
As the lead of Health Inequalities Reporting Initiative, Public Health Agency of Canada aims to begin tracking changes in health inequalities over time. Tracking changes in health inequalities over time can help inform programs and policies and assess if they are working fairly for everyone. It can also provide insights on where to focus health promotion interventions to support those most in need.
This rapid literature review helps fill in evidence gaps by identifying best practices for tracking health inequalities over time. In total, we reviewed 19 international initiatives and 14 Canadian studies that assessed health inequalities over time and identified over 20 promising practices.
These included:
Clarifying the purpose of the analyses for public health practice, and establishing analytic objectives accordingly.
Providing a clear rationale for the selection of health and social indicators for monitoring.
Selecting data sources with sufficient follow-up time frames to feasibly observe meaningful changes in health inequalities over time.
Providing a systematic description of rates and inequalities, by group and time periods, respectively.
Tracking changes in absolute and relative inequalities.
Providing enough methodological detail to allow for replication.
Using various data visualization techniques to convey key findings.
