NYU Grossman School of Medicine

From October 25-28, 2022, NYU Medical School participated in the 8th annual NYU Langone Health Disparities Symposium. Various university administrators and faculty spoke at and attended the event, including the medical school Director of Diversity and Inclusion. Events include "Intersectionality in Criminal-Justice Involved Populations", "Insufficient Reporting of Race and Ethnicity in Breast Cancer Clinical Trials", and "Imputing race and ethnicity to better understand healthcare disparities: A case study of COVID-19 hospitalizations among Medicaid-insured adults in NYS."

The school’s Office of Diversity Affairs said, “The Office of Diversity Affairs partnered with the Office of Medical Education to convene a Social Determinants of Health Task Force to include content across the undergraduate medical education (UME) curriculum on systemic racism and its impact on health outcomes. We are also partnering with graduate medical education (GME) programs and faculty to develop health equity curriculum for both UME and GME, as well as continuing education opportunities for faculty.”

The school’s Office of Diversity Affairs said, “We are partnering with the Departments of Population Health and Medicine, among others, to advance ground-breaking science that elucidate the causes and help inform strategies to address racial disparities in health.”

NYU Langone launched the Institute for Excellence in Health Equity, which “will advance the mission of health equity across our entire healthcare system and strive to build a culture of inclusive excellence by facilitating and enabling recruitment, training, and mentorship of medical students, physicians, and scientists.”

NYU Langone’s Section for Health Equity aims to “to promote health equity for racial and ethnic minorities and other underserved populations. We do this by conducting research on the effectiveness of various strategies to reduce health disparities, such as community health worker programs.”

The "Emergency Medicine Fellowship for Students Underrepresented in Medicine" is sponsored by the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Emergency Medicine at NYU Langone and takes place in the summer of 2023. The fellowship's description states, "We are committed to increasing diversity within the field of emergency medicine...the Association of American Medical Colleges defines underrepresented in medicine as 'those racial and ethnic populations that are underrepresented in the medical profession relative to their numbers in the general population'.”

The school’s Office of Diversity Affairs said, “In addition, our office has developed and made available to the entire NYU community a virtual training in implicit bias.”

NYU’s Health Sciences library offers a “Race and racism in medicine” resource guide, which includes Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist” and an article from the New York Times’ 1619 Project.

The Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry’s Anti-Racism Task Force “has developed, implemented, and facilitated anti-racist learning activities across the department and within working groups through a series of facilitated dialogues. The purpose of these activities is to identify and dismantle practices that perpetuate racism. Although there is strength in the organized and conscious action behind these initiatives, equally important is structuring a system of collective accountability to guide this work.”

The Office of Science Research has a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion team, which does “forward-looking programming and engagement, attention to opportunities for conversation and growth, a commitment to anti-racism, and crafting and championing policies and procedures that lead to equity.”

The Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Research team will be, “Providing educational resources that keep our community informed on developments within the field of DEI within the biomedical sciences.”

The school has a Student Diversity Initiative, which is “a student-driven task force that addresses issues of diversity, inclusion, and cultural competency for medical students at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.”

The school has “Diversity in Medical Education” programs, such as the “Practice of Medicine” (“a patient-centered program and continuity of care forum that helps medical students develop culturally competent clinical skills”) and “Health Disparities Selective” (a program where students “learn about health inequities that affect patient care and health outcomes through the health disparities selective, one of the MD degree selective courses. The four-week program uses readings, seminars, specialty clinics, and reflections to teach students about factors that can create health disparities, including race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, income, and education”).

NYU Langone’s Section for Health Equity provides “education and training for health professionals doing health equity work and help to develop policy that promotes health equity and encourages participatory action.”

The school’s Advanced Topics in Bioethics Elective has “Exploring Race and Racism in the History of Medicine” as one possible topic.

The 2022-23 schedule for Psychiatry Grand Rounds and Behavioral Health/Psychology Grand Rounds, weekly virtual lectures hosted by the Grossman School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, includes various lectures that blend anti-racism and DEI with health and medicine. On October 20, 2022, the school held a guest lecture titled "Engaging in Culturally Responsive, Anti-Racist Cognitive Behavioral Therapy." On December 15, 2022, NYU Grossman faculty gave a lecture titled "Cultural Humility." Further, the medical school plans to host an "Anti-Racism in Psychology" lecture on January 18, 2023.

The Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry “established an Anti-Racism Task Force with the goals of mobilizing to dismantle systemic racism in our department, at our institution, within the disciplines of child and adolescent psychiatry, and in the communities we serve; advocating for social justice; empowering and supporting racially minoritized colleagues and patients; encouraging and supporting white members of our department to explore white privilege and the impacts of systemic racism; and developing and fostering pathways to allyship.”

The school received a $20 million award from the American Heart Association to spearhead "a new initiative known as the RESTORE Health Equity Research Network."

The school received a $20 million award from the American Heart Association to spearhead "a new initiative known as the RESTORE Health Equity Research Network."

In September of 2022, NYU Langone's Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology appointed Dr. Garfield Clunie as the inaugural Vice Chair for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. In his role, Dr. Clunie plans to "spearhead efforts to promote health equity goals across clinical care, research, and medical education, [collaborate] closely with the Office of Diversity Affairs and the Institute for Excellence in Health Equity."

In October 2021, NYU Langone Health's Department of Psychiatry hired Dr. Ayana Jordan--"addiction expert and health equity advocate--as the Barbara Wilson Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Pillar Leader for Community Engagement in NYU Langone's Institute for Excellence in Health Equity. Dr. Jordan was director of the Social Justice and Health Equity Curriculum during her time as faculty at Yale SOM, and participated in the Biden administration's White House Office of Public Engagement Leaders in Health Equity Roundtable Series.

On June 30, 2023, the school signed on to the Associated Medical Schools of New York (AMSNY) statement in response to the Supreme Court's decision regarding race-conscious admission policies, which stated the following: "The consortium of the 17 medical schools of New York State, is profoundly concerned that the United State Supreme Court decisions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina will diminish opportunities for talented students pursuing careers in medicine and science. These decisions reject a longstanding precedent that recognized the compelling interest of ensuring diversity in higher education and may undermine recent advances to address inequities in medical education and research."