About Us

The Health Equity Thread (HET) is designed to equip our students with the knowledge and skills needed to understand and respond to the challenges of ensuring an equitable and inclusive healthcare system. Health equity is incorporated across the YSM curriculum to enhance knowledge and clinical skills, so students are ready to provide high-quality care for all patients. Achieving health equity will require rigorous science and innovative approaches that identify the mechanisms(s) of health disparities and address the systemic barriers, social policies, and specific health needs of patients with disparate health outcomes. The HET team, along with its Advisory Group, creates and curates educational content that engages learners from the pre-clerkship phase and extending into the advanced training period.

The HET team partners with educational leaders and faculty in the School of Medicine, including the Physician Associate program and the MD-PhD program, so curricular content related to the major domains of the HET is comprehensively addressed. Continuing medical education for faculty in health equity is an essential component of the HET, and is offered through retreats, conferences, videos, workshops, and one-on-one consultation with colleagues.

The strategic goal of the HET is to educate the next generation of physicians and physician-scientists to understand the mechanism(s) underlying health disparities and understand where there are gaps in our knowledge, and to develop the skills to recognize and surmount structural barriers to high-quality health care. The HET’s vision is that YSM students will help shape and lead a more equitable healthcare system and reimagine healthcare delivery to reduce disparate outcomes. As leaders, our graduates will conduct research that advances knowledge, innovate in medical education, and change systems and structures that perpetuate health inequities.