There are many structural barriers that perpetuate discrimination in healthcare, and medical education is among the vital ones. By intervening the foundation of future medical providers, C-STAHR believes that this curriculum project will potentially reduce bias and assumptions, both implicit and explicit, based on race that healthcare providers make.

 

We are working in collaboration with the University of Colorado School of Medicine (CUSOM) to complete our project, which is divided into two phases: 

1. The first phase is identification. In order to identify what modifications need to be made to the medical school curriculum, employing the Community-Based Participatory Research model, C-STAHR is working together with local community members to review current materials used to teach medical students. Our goal is to identify sources of stereotypes and other forms of bias that exist within the curriculum.

2. The second phase is analysis and recommendations. The breakdown of these data will be provided to CUSOM with the goal of informing future changes. We are hoping that this effort will help students to not only be aware, but also to address bias within themselves and others.

 

In Summer 2017, C-STAHR held six focus groups with local community members to review some specific curricular materials at CUSOM. Currently, the preliminary results have been presented to CUSOM. Our next step is to conduct a full analysis of the data from these focus groups. 

 

In the future, we will be expanding the momentum of this project to work on other aspects of the CUSOM’s medical education curriculum.