Presentations

Abstract

Introduction: Established in 2021, through our program's strong commitment to promoting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI) residency experience, our resident-led DEI committee strives to provide our self-identifying Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and allies the resources and opportunities to succeed in residency to better serve the diverse races, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status of our local community. One of the goals of this committee is to create a safe space for like-minded BIPOC residents and allies to collaborate on scholarly activities.

Methods: Since 2021, our resident-led DEI committee fostered a scholarly environment to be able to innovate medical education, mentorship, solidarity with the community, recruitment, and advocacy. Bi-annual meetings and frequent smaller meetings were held amongst the committee members to discuss project ideas, roadblocks, and statuses. Program and community DEI leaders were present for guidance. When necessary, program scholarly activity support was utilized. In 2023, the resident-led DEI committee performed a literature review and voluntary resident interviews in search of resident authorships and local, regional, and national conference acceptances from 2021-2023. Authorships were recorded per resident and grouped as committee members and non-members. Results are shown as counts and percentages.

Results: In 2021, 2022, and 2023, there were 15, 20, and 23 members and 53, 51, and 53 non-member residents respectively. 3(20%), 10(50%), and 19(82.6%) of the members and 31(58.5%), 28(54.9%), and 25(47.2%) non-member residents were authors in this time period. The total authorship ratio of members vs non-members in this period are 0.07(3/44), 0.61(28/46), and 0.82(40/49).

Conclusion: During our collection time frame, our residency-led DEI committee has continued to improve upon our research output throughout the years at an accelerated rate since the committee's establishment. Compared to the residency, which has a stable to slightly decreased percentage of scholarly output in the same time frame, the DEI committee is leading our residency's research efforts. This is due to a strong emphasis on not only scholarly activity, but the desire to determine which inequities exist in our residency and community and how we can work to alleviate these. With strong advocates in our administration as well as senior residents leading the committee that continues to provide support to new interns each year, we have continued to initiate and carry out an increasing number of DEI projects that have focused on a multitude of topics, such as pronoun education, microaggression education, and workshops, as well as the development of educational material for families of children with learning disabilities. Implementation of a DEI committee in residency programs can be an important catalyst for not only improving diversity from program-wide and patient-based standpoint, but also encourages increasing amounts of resident-driven research on such subjects.