Starting February 6-9, 2023, the Alliance for Continuing Medical Education in the Health Professions (ACEHP) will hold its Alliance 2023 Annual Conference at National Harbor, Maryland.
On Tuesday, February 7, the ACEHP will host a series of educational sessions on creating focused CME/CE programs in health equity and tailoring education programs to reach underserved communities. Several sessions will be live-streamed from the ACEHP event website for those unable to attend live.
There are several national leaders in the field of diversity equity and inclusion presenting at various sessions, including Russell Ledet, founder of the 15 White Coats; Gary Puckrein, CEO and founder of National Minority Quality Forum; Ashely Anna Lora, patient advocate and Yee Won Chong, award-winning film producer.
We must know more than that there is an issue and develop a plan to ensure everyone is treated with dignity and respect and deliver the care patients deserve.
Are we committed to DEI progress, or are we committed to DEI notoriety?
Tuesday, February 7, 2023
8:30 AM – 10:00 AM
Location: Woodrow Wilson Ballroom
Livestream
Dr. Russell J. Ledet, MD, Ph.D., MBA, is a native of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and a US Navy Veteran. While at Tulane School of Medicine, Dr. Ledet co-founded the 15 White Coats, an organization that helps propel under-represented minority students to the following levels of education by providing inspiration and economic support. This session is live-streamed.
DEI Showcase includes:
Health Disparities: Filling the Void with Continuing Professional Development
Tuesday, February 7, 2023
11:00 AM – 11:45 AM
Location: Woodrow Wilson Ballroom
Livestream
Faculty include:
Sarah Nisly, PharmD, MEd, BCPS, FCCP
Vice President, Outcomes and Clinical Impact
Clinical Education Alliance
Lisa M. Handley, PharmD
Director, Scientific Strategy, Immunology
Clinical Education Alliance
Richard A. Menear, BS
Doctor of Pharmacy Candidate
Fred Wilson School of Pharmacy at High Point University
Katelyn Hernandez
PharmD Candidate
UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy
Ashley Ann Lora is a leading patient advocate and consultant in the eczema community.
Gary A. Puckrein, Ph.D., is President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Minority Quality Forum (formerly the National Minority Health Month Foundation), a nonprofit organization he founded in 1998.
Health disparities impact all of us; solutions are not individualized but systematic. Living in a diverse and constantly changing world, our patients’ backgrounds, cultures, and belief systems are continually evolving and adapting. Therefore, continuing professional development (CPD) providers are uniquely positioned to identify and address disparities in healthcare.
Throughout the past, few medical training programs have taught focused content in the classroom setting to minimize disparities among underrepresented populations. This is seen in a 2011 survey finding that 33% of medical schools reported zero hours of LGBTQ+ education within their curriculum. In another survey, only 16.4% of radiologists believed they received proper education and training in health disparities. The void in meaningful education within healthcare training to prevent future health disparities is vast. Of the lack of education within healthcare provider schools, patients in minorities are highly impacted. This alarming data illustrates the need for healthcare professionals to engage in timely education for disparities mitigation in their practice.
While standalone programming can be impactful, partnerships between CPD providers and healthcare systems can also yield meaningful education on healthcare disparities. Siamet is a partnership between the Maniilaq Association in northwest Alaska, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. This organization has brought attention to tribal health disparities by providing healthcare team members with effective CPD to improve care. These educational programs allowed healthcare professionals to be exposed to members of the tribal community and teach other healthcare professionals how to decrease the health disparities that have affected this community in the past.
Individual institutions have also targeted training programs. The Tea House Series was designed and implemented to build anti-racist and anti-oppressive faculty and staff at the University of California San Francisco. The program highlighted increasing awareness, engaging in dialogue and self-reflection, and understanding data. The Tea House series found that participants developed an increase in confidence in the learning objectives proposed during each session, indicating the growth of the participants following the series.
The ability to educate learners on different methods to overcome healthcare disparities has been established at CEA. Specific focus in critical therapeutic areas has yielded valuable strategies for use in clinical practice to combat health disparities. Importantly, CEA highlights how social determinants of health impact the quality of care, which can help learners recognize these barriers and ultimately bridge the gap between minorities and adequate healthcare. Finally, all Alliance members can help improve diverse representation within programming, partnerships, and key opinion leaders.
Practical Tools to incorporate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion into Your Next Educational Programs
Tuesday, February 7, 2023
10:15 AM – 11:00 AM
Location: Woodrow Wilson Ballroom
Livestreamed
Sapana Panday, MPH
VP, Educational Strategy
RMEI Medical Education, LLC
As medical schools continue to support programs for diversity in medical education, more students from underrepresented and educationally and economically disadvantaged backgrounds seek careers in medicine. Greater diversity and inclusion are not only crucial in equalization, but they also prepare medical students to more effectively meet the needs of an increasingly diverse patient population, which is crucial to ultimately eliminating health disparities within health care. However, today’s subject matter experts continue to represent old demographics, primarily white, male, and upper socioeconomic groups. Clinical trials that guide clinical practice often are based on a predominantly White population. While people of color make up about 39% of the U.S. population, these groups represent as low as 2% of trial patients.
Diversity in health care goes far beyond a language barrier. It’s about understanding a patient’s mindset within a larger context of culture, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and socioeconomic realities. However, most medical education patient examples are limited in their representation of the diverse patient population. Have you ever encountered a patient wearing a religious headdress during simulated case presentations or being described as in a same-sex relationship? Mainstream stock images distributors often lack images of different populations.
This session will provide medical education providers with practical tools to help them make their education more representative of their audience. We will review ways to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) via three approaches: targeting the planners, content creators, and content itself.
Other DEI Sessions Include
Infusing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism Concepts Into the Fabric of Continuing Education
Tuesday, February 7, 2023
10:15 AM – 11:45 AM
Location: Annapolis 1&2
Presenters:
Sujita Adhikari, MPH, CPH
Educational Program Manager
University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth
Ericka k. Harden-Dews, J.D., CHCP
Director, Continuing Education, and Assessment
University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC)
Brenda Wilson, MS, CHCP (she/her/hers)
Sr. Instructional Designer
University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth
The University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth is leading the critical conversations on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism (DEIA). It is central to our institutional mission and integrated into educating our students and faculty and engaging with the communities we serve. The first part of our learning lab will be primarily didactic. We will elaborate on how we have infused the DEIA concepts in our planning, delivery of content, and evaluation processes. We will use one of our enduring continuing education (CE) activities on Social Determinants of Health and Pain Management as an example to demonstrate the incorporation of DEIA concepts.
We will also discuss and share the tools and resources we have used in our department to integrate and promote DEIA throughout the presentation, if not at the end.
We believe using evidence-based education strategies, like small group learning, case-based learning, and reflective learning will foster the critical thinking and self-awareness of the participants. They can walk away with at least some ideas or skills to apply DEIA to their CE operations and activities.
Panel Discussion on Education that Improves Inclusive Healthcare: Lessons from a Program Focused on Cancer Screening and Care for Transgender Individuals
Tuesday, February 7, 2023
1:45 PM – 2:45 PM Location:
Annapolis 1&2
Presenters:
Kevin Obholz, PhD
SVP, Educational Strategy
Clinical Education Alliance
Yee Won Chong
Filmmaker and Community Organizer
Boxxo Productions, Trans Dudes with Lady Cancer
Rachael M. Andrie, PhD
Senior Scientific Director
Clinical Care Options (CCO)
Nelson Sanchez, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has recently gained critical and increased societal attention and has been a topic of discussion and learning at recent Alliance meetings. However, the faculty for this abstract and proposed session is leading in DEI and passionately believes that more work must be done to overcome barriers, mainly through CPD education, to reduce existing and emerging disparities and improve compassionate healthcare for all patients. Therefore, the focus of this session aligns closely with the Alliance 2023 theme “Overcoming. Emerging. Leading.” but is also unique in many ways. First, DEI sessions at the past Alliance meetings have not been specifically focused on education to improve the healthcare of transgender individuals. Second, the panelists’ diverse backgrounds, expertise, and viewpoints will equip learners with practical, take-home knowledge and skills, and inspiration to continue pursuing and improving their DEI-focused education efforts.
Examples of patient-led podcasts and clips from the documentary “Trans Dudes With Lady Cancer” http://www.transdudeswithladycancer.org/
Learning Collaborative – Driving Equity Through Awareness: Addressing Social Determinants of Health and Disparities in Care in Medical Education
Tuesday, February 7, 2023
1:45 PM – 4:15 PM
Location: Annapolis 3
Presenters:
Dipti Desai, PharmD, MBA, CHCP
Senior Director of Scientific Affairs and Outcomes
Pharmacy Times Continuing Education
Dean Beals
President and CEO
DKBMed
Greselda Butler, CHCP, FACEHP
Associate Director, Grants and Contributions
Otsuka
Jean Anderson, MD
Professor Emerita, Gynecology, and Obstetrics
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
Healthcare disparities are linked to social determinants of health, which include access to healthcare and education. Medical education can be used to increase awareness and provide guidance on how healthcare professionals can address these disparities in care in their practice. This session will use a collaborative learning model with experienced panelists to foster peer-to-peer learning on opportunities to incorporate the patient voice into medical education and provide insights to optimize the care of patients. Participants will be invited to share their experiences on the following questions:
What strategies did your organization use to encourage discussions around social determinants of health and incorporate them into continuing education?
How has your organization focused on educational opportunities to address disparities in care in general or for specific therapeutic areas?
How have you incorporated the patient voice when designing and developing your medical education programs?
What challenges related to addressing social determinants of health in content for medical education have you encountered in the past, and how did you overcome them?
Innovation: Being aware of how clinicians can address disparities in care and the social determinants of health will improve overall patient care. This session will highlight best practices and ways to design content for medical education programs to incorporate the patient’s voice and identify how to better discuss challenging topics to make patients feel more comfortable and trust their healthcare professionals.
The Importance of LGBTQ+ Continuing Education in Improving Patient Care
Tuesday, February 7, 2023
3:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Woodrow Wilson Ballroom
Livestream
Presenter:
Tricia Wilson, MS
Educational Activity Manager
Optum Health Education
Stigma and discrimination against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ+) community—intentional, unintentional, or due to implicit bias—can negatively affect the health and well-being of the LGBTQ+ population. Moreover, many healthcare professionals (HCPs) do not routinely discuss gender identity or sexual orientation with their patients, even though this information is essential to their medical history. HCPs may lack the knowledge or language to discuss these topics comfortably with their patients. They may not realize that disparities in health care for LGBTQ+ patients can stem from this lack of affirming communication, allowing mental health stressors and issues to remain unaddressed. This session will focus on the partnership between Optum Health Education and OutCare Health as it relates to educating HCPs about these issues to improve the healthcare experience for LGBTQ+ people.
Summary
In addition, there will be several posters presented look for the poster sessions onsite. All the DEI sessions will be made available at a later date on the ACEHP virtual meeting website
As you can see, there are many learning opportunities at the ACEHP annual meeting. These DEI sessions will give your organization opportunities to learn how to apply diversity, equity, and inclusion into your educational settings.
If you would like to connect with Policy and Medicine at the meeting, please stop by the Continuing Education Alliance Booth in the exhibit hall or send me an email at tsullivan@clinicaloptions.com