Ending Racial Bias in American Medicine: A Call for Help from the AMA, NMA, AAMC, and the Rest of Us

Bias based on skin color, religion, immigrant status, gender, and ethnicity are deeply rooted in American culture and have existed within the infrastructure of American medicine from the beginning. Now, medical educators are struggling to find curriculum and experiences that effectively address explicit and implicit bias among our increasingly diverse group of students, house staff, and practitioners. The leadership, experience, and lessons learned needed to scrub present medical school curricula of racial bias, to develop an antiracist curriculum, and to test its effectiveness already lies with the American Medical Association (AMA), the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), and the National Medical Association (NMA). We call on these organizations to jointly convene a consortium of medical educators, social scientists, curricular specialists, and others to chart a way forward to assist medical schools and professional organizations in developing evaluable curricular materials and experiences to eliminate bias in health care. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Bias based on skin color, religion, immigrant status, gender, and ethnicity is deeply rooted in American culture and medicine. Medical educators are seeking ways to address explicit and implicit bias, calling on major medical organizations to develop anti-racist curriculum.