In so many ways, the IHP is a unique community. I heard it when I first interviewed for the position of President, and it became clear soon after I arrived in 2017 that this is indeed the case.
This is a community where people have a distinctive commitment to each other and to the IHP’s mission of educating tomorrow’s health care leaders. Through our actions and strategies, we have shown our commitment to creating an inclusive and welcoming environment that focuses on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). I would like to share with you just a few of the initiatives we have undertaken during the last two years that have expanded on the great DEI work that already existed at the IHP.
One of the first strategies was to expand the scope of the existing Diversity Council to become the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council so that it was more reflective of what we believed it should focus on. We added students to ensure they were properly represented. We also changed the Council’s approach so that it would have a much more visible and active role in providing leadership on these issues.
At a mini-strategic planning exercise in the fall of 2017, we identified four areas on which the Council should focus: increasing the number of underrepresented faculty, improving the diversity and cultural content in the curriculum, making the IHP core values real for students as they enter our community, and increasing the student voice. A task force for each initiative was created to address the identified goals.
The Core Values Task Force initiated an addition to the student orientation experience entitled What is the IHP’s Role in Health Care? Exploring the Impact of Power, Privilege and Positionality. This four-hour session began with a discussion about the IHP Core Values followed by a panel discussion of how those core values are lived in the IHP community, in the classroom and in the clinical setting. The panel discussion was followed by small group breakout sessions facilitated by our faculty and staff who had received empowered bystander behavior training. We have done these sessions three times over the last year, and we have received positive feedback from the students about the program and the tone it sets for their relationship with the IHP. We plan to continue to provide this experience to incoming students, improving it each time based on student feedback.
The Faculty Recruitment Task Force recommended improving our efforts to recruit underrepresented faculty. Because we are continually searching for very successful underrepresented faculty and engaging them with the IHP, even when we don’t have a faculty position open in their field, Human Resources has hired a new manager committed to developing a series of actions that could include inviting potential faculty to be a guest lecturer or sending a congratulatory letter to them upon receiving an award, which in many cases would introduce them to the school. These and other actions would help establish a relationship with someone and give us an edge in enticing them to join our faculty.
The Curriculum Task Force’s focus is on improving all programs’ case studies in the curriculum. One of our primary responsibilities is to help prepare our students to care for patients in diverse settings and provide them with new perspectives on leading change in health care. So when we heard from some students who felt our case studies often did not include diverse populations or explore issues of diversity from a culturally thoughtful perspective, we decided to create a model for faculty to develop culturally appropriate case studies and strategies to better represent the world in which our students will work and live.
The Student Voice Task Force has just started its work to develop a campaign called “#IHP and Me” that will feature students talking about their experiences. We intend to launch this campaign in the near future.
We believe that building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community is the responsibility of every faculty, staff member, student, and graduate, but we recognize that leadership in this space provides the focus and intellectual capital needed to advance our work and improve our community. To that end, we were so pleased to hire Dr. Leah Gordon as Assistant Director for Multicultural Affairs and Inclusion after a short stint as an academic counselor in the School of Nursing. Already, she has made the IHP more responsive to student needs and more informed about strategies to improve our community. In addition, Dr. Kimberly Truong has been hired as the Executive Director for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion starting July 8. She and Leah will work together to provide direction and focus for this important work in our community.
Even with these steps, we acknowledge that our efforts are—and will always be—a work in progress. Our path toward inclusive excellence will help us enhance the structure for academic excellence. I see this as a journey, both personal and professional, and one which I look forward to sharing with you.