Southern Illinois University School of Medicine

The goal of the Tracey Meares Representation Matters Scholarship at the school's Institute for Plastic Surgery is "to give students from backgrounds underrepresented in medicine an opportunity to experience firsthand what it would be like to be a plastic surgery resident at SIU School of Medicine."

The school's Minority Faculty Recruitment Plan also includes its policies regarding students, which states the following: "the School will recruit, retain, and advance a student body, faculty, and staff reflective of the diversity of the region served by the medical school. A diverse faculty includes individuals from traditionally underrepresented in medicine groups (African-Americans, Latinos, Native- American Indians, Alaskans Natives, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders) as well as women."

On June 30, 2023, the school published its response to the Supreme Court's decision regarding race-conscious admission policies and stated the following: "We join our colleagues in academic medicine across the country in stating that today’s court ruling has the potential to decrease diversity in the health professions and is contrary to efforts to provide better health for all. The SIU School of Medicine remains committed to strengthening the diversity of the medical student body and will work within all legal limits to ensure racial and ethnic diversity in the health professions."

The school's Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion has a request form for those interested in diversity training.

The school's Health Equity Scholar Pathway is "an elective program offered through SIU School of Medicine that acknowledges the crucial importance of an integrated commitment of medical students and practitioners who pursue inclusive and bias-free medical education opportunities and make contributions to medical education scholarship and innovation."

The school's Center for Equity in Professional Development "work[s] with industry leaders to develop training and technical assistance to support their efforts to build a more diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce for the future."

The school's 2020-2025 Strategic Plan states that it would "Develop a leading-edge training center" that is "mindful of diversity and equity in learner recruitment and retention, curricula, assessment and program evaluation."

The school's 2020-2025 Strategic Plan states that the school "strive[s] to be a just, fair, unbiased, and anti-racist organization" and that it would continuously evaluate "policies, procedures and practices to minimize all forms of overt, implicit and historically propagated systemic bias."

The school's 2020-2025 Strategic Plan describes anti-racism as follows: "Anti-racism is the active process of identifying and eliminating racism by changing systems, organizational structures, policies and practices and attitudes, so that power is redistributed and shared equitably. An anti-racist organization is one in which racism is actively opposed and in which justice and fairness are actively promoted."

The school's 2020-2025 Strategic Plan states that the school would "Develop a diverse and inclusive workforce, promote equitable treatment, and revise governance structures and policies to support equity across the organization," "Identify, address and minimize overt and implicit bias," and "Become an anti-racist organization."

The school's 2020-2025 Strategic Plan states, "We must also creatively consider partnerships with other governmental and non-governmental agencies, private industry, individuals, foundations, and organizations that address the social determinants of health."

The school's Alonzo Homer Kenniebrew Lecture and Conference on Health Inequities and Disparities is "an annual discussion of health disparities and other factors that impact population health."

The school's Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion states the following on becoming an antiracist institution: "Antiracism includes a multiplicity of ways of being that include being race conscious and race aware. It pays attention to and notices how systemic racism is embedded in our systems through long held cultural practices and policies that have biases for and against. It uses a framework and pays attention to power as it presumes that our relationships are complex, as is the system of racism in the United States since the moment we determined to be a race-based society and our institutions are divided and human beings perpetuate those ideologies even in ways they don’t always recognize."

The school's Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion states the following: "In 2020, SIU System President Dan Mahony also charged each campus to establish an anti-racism task force. For the School of Medicine, Kruse appointed 35 members to develop four focus areas: metrics, organizational analysis, policies and procedures, and training."

On May 29, 2020, the school's news section published a message from the Dean titled "Racism's Threat to Public Health," which stated the following: "We can no longer stand by and idly give meager excuses that tiptoe around the core issues. Health and human life are in our hands. We, at SIU Medicine, institutionally and individually, reject violence and hatred. We reject racism in all its forms, overt and insidious, systemic and implicit, national and local." The news article includes a picture of students and staff holding a "White Coats for Black Lives" sign.