PHM Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Valley Children’s Division of Hospital Medicine is deeply committed to advancing health equity and to promoting diversity and inclusion. The leadership of the Graduate Medical Education Committee Subcommittee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is within our division and has championed significant organizational change to support a more diverse, equitable and inclusive clinical learning environment.
The mission of the GMEC Subcommittee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is to foster a learning environment that seeks a broad range of perspectives, elevates voices that have been unheard, and promotes a more equitable delivery of healthcare.
This framework for this is grounded in three pillars, each in collaboration with other entities in the organization doing complementary work:
- Faculty and Learner Development
- Promotion of Health Disparities-focused Scholarly Work
- Advocacy and Cultural Celebrations
Faculty and Learner Development
- Dedicated sessions on health disparities and implicit bias and how to address them in both practice and in the delivery of educational content, including a dedicated curriculum for faculty, trainees, and interprofessional staff, “Approaching CME With An Equity Lens”
- Redesign of morbidity and mortality conferences to include specifically addressing implicit bias and health disparities
- Modification to existing recruitment strategy to meaningfully incorporate potential contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion in assessment of applicants
- Health Equity Grand Rounds series planned by members of PHM division and open to entire organization
Supporting Health Disparities-focused Scholarly Work
As overwhelming evidence demonstrates the insidious nature of factors affecting healthcare outcomes, our goal is to foster understanding of existing inequities and health disparities and develop solutions to address them. Examples include:
- Quality Improvement Project to offer discharge instructions for common pediatric diagnoses in families’ preferred language
- LGBTQ+ Health Curriculum for resident physicians and interprofessional staff
- Revising existing Quality Improvement and Research Project applications to ensure prospective investigators have considered the relationship between their scholarly question and any relevant health disparities
Advocacy and Cultural Celebrations
The DEI subcommittee continues to work toward our vision of ensuring equitable, high-quality care to all patients, and to develop an institutional culture that values the experience of every learner, employee, patient and family member. A significant part of this is acknowledging and celebrating cultural events highlighting historically marginalized or minoritized groups. Examples include:
- Disparities-focused book club and film discussions
- In partnership with the Resident Diversity Council (RDC) and the Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS), the creation of Valley Children’s Hospital’s first Día de los Muertos altar, to now become an annual tradition.
- Shared stories within the organizational daily update to raise awareness of the contributions of historically marginalized groups within medicine, including for Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Asian-American and Pacific-Islander Heritage Month, LGBTQ+ Pride Month, and others.
- Dissemination and promotion of information regarding existing community advocacy events
- Supporting panel discussions for discussing potentially challenging or polarizing topics such as legislation targeting LGBTQ+ youth
- Contributions to the public facing Valley Children’s At the Heart blog on topics pertaining to historically marginalized groups