Two Yale Psychiatry residents are among the 11 participants accepted to the 2020-21 Yale Internal Medicine Residency Writers’ Workshop.
Danielle Jackson, MD, MPH, a Fourth-Year Resident, and Amanda J. Calhoun, MD, MPH, a Second-Year Resident in the Albert J. Solnit Integrated Adult/Child Psychiatry Program, will participate in the annual two-day intensive writing workshop.
“I am thrilled to have the opportunity to participate in the writing workshop,” Jackson said. “I believe it is important to obtain the knowledge and skills to express my written voice as one of few Black Americans in psychiatry. My goal is to utilize writing as an additional medium to continue to advocate for the dismantling of structural racism, specifically anti-Black racism in psychiatry.”
“Growing up, I was always writing,” Calhoun said. “When I would get frustrated with the racist portrayal of Black people in books or in movies, my parents would tell me, ‘Well, we have to write our own stories. So, write something better!’ Even today, when I feel overwhelmed or unheard, I write. I think writing is so powerful.”
Calhoun writes for the Connecticut Psychiatric Society newsletter and AAP Council on School Health. Her writing and research interests include the improvement of mental and physical health outcomes in the Black American community by targeting the trauma of racism.
Calhoun aims to increase representation of Black and Indigenous populations, both in the United States and abroad, in academic research and has first-authored a plethora of manuscripts and received numerous research awards, including the APA SAMHSA Minority Fellowship, most recently. Calhoun considers herself an "activist-trainee" and has given a Grand Rounds presentations and protest speeches exposing racism in the medical system. She firmly believes that all doctors should be activists and promotes the integration of social justice teaching with medical education.
Jackson, a 2019 REACH Scholar, co-director for the social justice and health equity curriculum in Yale’s Department of Psychiatry and a SAMHSA Substance Abuse Minority Fellow. She was recently accepted to the Harvard Macy Post Graduate Medical Education course for future academic clinician educators. Her research interest focuses on the development of patient-oriented, structurally competent approaches to mental health and substance use education in the Black Community. Jackson was also among the recent honorees who received the “Top 2020 Health Professional Under 40" award from the National Medical Association (NMA).
The Yale Internal Medicine Residency Writers’ Workshop is designed for residents of all writing levels in internal medicine and other specialties, including psychiatry, pediatrics, radiology, OB/GYN, surgery, and emergency medicine. Participants learn the nuts and bolts of good writing, give each other feedback on their stories and essays, work on revisions, and take part in writing exercises. After the workshop, participants continue to work on revising their essays and stories with ongoing mentoring by Anna Reisman, MD, Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, and Lisa Sanders, MD, FACP, Associate Professor of Medicine (General Medicine).
Workshop graduates have gone on to publish pieces in JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of General Internal Medicine, KevinMD, Hektoen International, and elsewhere.
For more information about the workshop, visit the Cross Program Information section of the Residency Training Programs website.