Antiracism in Medical Education

Racism operates in many contexts—in individuals, systems, and institutional and social spaces—and often at multiple levels simultaneously. To eliminate racism and its harmful effects, it must first be recognized, acknowledged, and understood. 

As a professional community, the Canadian Paediatric Society has a responsibility to provide and promote safe and inclusive spaces and opportunities to all its members, both within and outside of the organization.

The Working Group has collected a number of resources for educators and learners who want read more or assess their own educational materials.

Resources for medical educators

Indigenous health in specialty postgraduate medical education guide

This guide responds directly to faculties of medicine looking to enhance Indigenous health curricula and programming.

Guidebook, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, 2021

CanMEDS-Family Medicine Indigenous Health Supplement

The Indigenous supplement to the CanMEDS-FM 2017 competency framework is a resource for undergraduate, postgraduate, and continuing medical education with potential to assist with program design, curriculum content, learning methods, and learner assessment.

Guidebook, College of Family Physicians of Canada, 2020 

Checklists and toolkits for antiracism in medical education

Health Equity and Inclusive Framework for Education and Training

A framework to integrate equity and inclusion into the process of designing, developing and/or delivering training, courses and curriculum for health professionals.

Checklist/evaluation, CAMH, 2021

 Anti-racism in medicine collection
“Provides educators with practice-based, peer-reviewed resources to teach anti-racist knowledge and clinical skills, elevates the educational scholarship of anti-racist curricula, and aims to convene a community of collaborators dedicated to the elimination of racism within medical education.”
Resources, MedEd Portal, Association of American Medical Colleges, 2020

Toolkit for teaching about racism in the context of persistent health and healthcare disparities
“This toolkit was formed … to teach health care providers to reduce healthcare inequities. Our discussions have focused on race and racism but include a larger critical dialogue on bias, identity, intersectionality, and privilege. This toolkit provides examples of resources and activities that many of us are using in our attempts to teach these topics.”
Toolkit, Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, May 2017

 The Upstate Bias Checklist: A Checklist for Assessing Bias in Health Professions Education Content

Free, publicly available tool for use when developing or reviewing content for learners at any level in the health professions. Evaluation/checklist, Dr. Amy Caruso Brown, 2017 (rev. 2021)

Inclusive and bias-free curriculum checklist

Adapted from Dr. Amy Caruso Brown's Upstate Bias Checklist by Northwestern Medicine.

Evaluation/checklist, Northwestern University, n.d.

De-Biasing Medical Education: A Checklist Methodology

One-hour webinar by Dr. Amy Caruso Brown, pediatric hematologist/oncologist, bioethicist and medical education at SUNY Upstate Medical University. Dr. Caruso Brown discusses how medical education content suffers from implicit, and sometimes explicit, bias with regard to race, ethnicity, gender and other characteristics. 

Webinar, Northwestern University, National Collaborative for Education to Address the Social Determinants of Health, November 2019

Reports and peer-reviewed literature

 Black at Temerity Medicine; Addressing Anti-Black Racism

This "accountability report" from the University of Toronto's medical school looks at current and future actions to dismantle anti-Black racism, with a particular focus on the MD program and post-graduate medical education.

Report, University of Toronto, 2022

 A framework for developing antiracist medical educators and practitioner-scholars

The authors propose a framework for faculty development in antiracism education, and describe key elements to building faculty capacity to provide antiracism education to medical students and residents.

Scholarly Perspective, Academic Medicine, 2022

Educational resources for learners

Indigenous child and youth health in Canada: A curriculum for paediatric residents
Developed by the Canadian Paediatric Society and the National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health, this 4-part training program on Indigenous child and youth health includes a module on providing culturally safe care.
Training, CPS/NCCIH, 2020

Indigenous Health Primer

An accredited learning tool for physicians who want to learn essential knowledge about Indigenous health, including case studies of Indigenous experiences and insights from Indigenous Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

Primer, The Indigenous Health Writing Group of the Royal College, 2019