We hope you saw the announcement a week ago that Benjamin Mba, MBBS, MRCP (UK), CHCQM, FACP, has been named Vice Chair, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI). He will also serve as the Graduate Medical Education Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for Yale New Haven Hospital and Yale School of Medicine (YSM). Ben will be relocating from Chicago and starts officially on July 1, 2023. We will all partner to help the transition to Ben as he joins Yale. Please give him a warm welcome!
We have been busy sharing information about YSM residency programs at HBCU visits and residency fairs. On March 17 and 18, faculty, staff, and trainees from the Department of Internal Medicine, and other departments and staff from Yale New Haven Health attended the Howard recruitment fair. We also attended 59th Annual Medical Education Conference earlier this month in Hartford.
These efforts are making a difference.
On March 17, YSM celebrated Match Day and we had one of our most diverse matches to date. Of the 105 matches in internal medicine, 33 are international medical graduates and 21 are underrepresented in medicine.
In addition to the new residents who will soon be joining us in New Haven, we are recruiting now for our next participants in the Visiting Students Scholarship Program. We have received five applications to date. If you know of a student who may be interested, please encourage them to learn more about the program and apply on the department’s diversity website.
We would be remiss if we did not mention the religious and secular events during the month of April.
- Ramadan is held from April 2 through May 2. It is a holy month for Muslims during which they fast daily from sunrise to sunset. We’d like to share a helpful resource developed by UC Davis that shares details about Ramadan and how we can support our colleagues during this month.
- Vaisakhi is a celebratory day for Sikhs, and held on Friday, April 14. During the festival, worshippers perform a folk dance while donning colorful clothing.
- From sundown on April 5 to April 13, a major Jewish holiday, Passover, is celebrated. Observers will share in a seder meal on the first one or two evenings of the holiday, along with other religious traditions.
- On April 9, Christians celebrate Easter. Easter commemorates the day that Jesus rose from the dead, and is the end of Holy Week and the 40-day period of Lent.
If there are questions about any Department of Medicine DEI initiatives, or an issue pertaining to DEI across the department for faculty, trainees, or staff, please contact Vandana. If you are a DEI vice chief and have a question or concern, please contact Aba. For GME-related DEI questions, please contact Steve Huot.
For this month’s “Voices of DEI,” we highlight Brienne Miner, MD, MHS. You can read this column on the website and via social media. If you wish to participate as a featured voice of DEI and we welcome all to do so, please complete the survey at this link.
We are excited to partner with each of you on DEI initiatives.
Best wishes,
Vandana Khungar, MD, MSc (Interim Associate Chair for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion)
Vice Chief for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion | Digestive Diseases
Associate Professor of Medicine
Aba Black, MD, MHS (Interim Associate Chair for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion)
Vice Chief for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion | General Internal Medicine
Assistant Professor of Medicine