To facilitate broader discussions on disparities in medicine, Chief Fellows Dr. Anna Kress and Dr. Benjamin Lu, have created Yale’s first Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) curriculum as part of the Yale Medical OncologyHematology Fellowship Program. To date, they have organized three sessions focused on discussion and trainings related to DEI topics important to the fellows.
These are held as part of the didactic component of their fellowship training. During the first session, Dr. Pamela Kunz, Vice Chief of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Medical Oncology, shared her story and held an open discussion on gender equity in the workplace. The second session was a DEI-focused Journal Club co-led by Dr. Darin Latimore, Yale School of Medicine’s inaugural Deputy Dean for Diversity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer. In attendance were Dr. Barbara Burtness, Interim Associate Cancer Center Director for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Dr. Iris Isufi, Vice Chief of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for Hematology and they discussed articles focused on misogyny and racism. For the third session, the fellows invited The Women’s Place from The Ohio State University for an interactive, skillsbased training session.
In the future, they hope to create spaces for different aspects of DEI and expand the format based on feedback from fellows. Dr. Kress commented that these discussions were already happening organically between fellows, but there was no formal outlet in place. Their goal was to create a forum to cater these discussions and help build skills in the professional and clinical setting. For, as Dr. Lu remarked, “The more diverse and the more openminded we are as physicians, the better the care we can deliver to all of our patients.”