What We Do: Current D&I Initiatives

Helping mentor a diverse generation of future physicians, scientists, and physician-scientists is integral to our mission. The D&I committee works with several established mentorship programs, and promotes Yale MD/PhD student engagement with these programs. Such mentorship programs include PATHS, STARS, and BioMed SURF.

The Committee is actively working to establish anti-racism workshops and training, with input from the Yale School of Medicine Diversity, Inclusion, Community Engagement, and Equity (DICE) Office. We are also collaborating with other graduate and professional programs at Yale to consolidate university-wide initiatives.

In an effort to continue to recruit a diverse student body, members of the D&I committee attend recruitment fairs and events throughout the year, including the NIH Graduate Fair, SACNAS, and ABRCMS.

We are partnering with Gather New Haven to “promote public health and community development, most notably through the Farm-Based Wellness program, which engages individuals with diet-related chronic disease risk factors as well as their families in gardening and nutrition education.” The community outreach team will be creating health and nutrition curriculum, filming cooking workshops, and planning meditative nature walks for participant

We strive to continue to include discourse about diversity, inclusion, racism, bias, and inequity into our medical and scientific training. We have recently piloted an initiative to integrate D&I into the Program’s research-in-progress meetings, asking students to include a discussion of how issues of health inequity, race, or bias may be related to their research. Furthermore, we encourage program-wide distribution and discussion of scholarly work around topics related to D&I.

We strive to be a program that is inclusive for trainees of all financial backgrounds. Towards this goal, we are working to establish financial literacy and tax advice programs.

Creating an inclusive climate requires a nuanced understanding of trainees’ experiences. Recently, Dr. Rogers worked with the Yale DICE Office to create an anonymous climate survey for all MD/PhD trainees to better understand how the Program can work to improve its climate and culture for all trainees.