Jessica Isom, MD, MPH, a third-year resident in the Yale Department of Psychiatry, has been named Co-President of the Yale Minority Housestaff Organization (MHO) for the 2018-2019 academic year.
MHO works to create a supportive and fecund environment for minorities throughout the Yale New Haven Health System. Members include medical residents, fellows, and other health care trainees. Members often partner with medical faculty through the Minority Organization for Retention and Expansion (MORE) and medical students through the Student National Medical Association (SNMA) and the Latino Medical Student Association (LMSA).
In her new role, Isom will work with members of the MHO Executive Board to plan executive board meetings and general body meetings. She will help coordinate activities that involve community service, plan member and social gatherings, and create MHO member diversity recruitment teams that attend SNMA and LMSA conferences each year.
She said the relationship between MHO and the Yale School of Medicine’s Graduate Medical Education Office has been reinvigorated with a focus on improving diversity and inclusion efforts hospital-wide.
She said she has two primary goals as Co-President.
“The first is to foster increased connectedness of MHO members through fellowship, community service and mentorship,” she said. “My second goal is to strengthen our partnership with the Office of Graduate Medical Education and the Diversity Resident Senate Council in hopes of improving our hospital-wide ability to attract, support, and retain trainees from underrepresented racial-ethnic backgrounds. I hope to further this ongoing collaboration by drawing upon the Department of Psychiatry’s wealth of knowledge and track record of relative successes as it relates to diversity and inclusion programming and infrastructure.”