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University of Connecticut School of Medicine

Medical School

Mailing Address
263 Farmington Avenue
Farmington, Connecticut 06030
Phone
(860) 679-2000
Email address
admissions@uchc.edu
School Information
"UConn School of Medicine, part of the University of Connecticut (UConn), was established in 1961 on the then new 160-acre campus in Farmington. It admitted its first class in 1968 and granted its first medical degrees in 1972. The medical school and its faculty’s teaching, clinical care, and research fuel UConn Health, Connecticut’s only public academic medical center. Today’s 206-acre UConn Health campus is located approximately 38 miles from UConn’s main campus in Storrs and 8 miles from the state capital in Hartford. The medical school’s advanced MDelta curriculum, implemented in 2016, employs team-based learning instruction and is focused on shaping and refining students’ problem-solving, diagnostic, and treatment skills. Humanism in medicine and the health systems sciences are integral components of MDelta. For nearly 50 years, UConn medical school has had a strong history of producing the next generation of physicians, and UConn overall has a proud 130 year history and is among the top 25 public universities in the nation" (Source: https://medicine.uconn.edu/about-us/). Furthermore, "through 2022, the UConn School of Medicine has graduated 51 classes and 3,977 medical school students" (Source: https://medicine.uconn.edu/about-us/fast-facts/).
General Information
The university has engaged many DEI initiatives, which includes training for implicit bias reduction for the staff of the DEI Committee. The school also offers a Health Equity Track. Implicit bias modules are offered for faculty professional development. Many events related to anti-racism and DEI are hosted. See developments below:

Actions Taken

Admissions Policies
  • A toolkit document entitled "Teaching About Racism in the Context of Persistent Health and Healthcare Disparities: How Educators Can Enlighten Themselves and Their Learners" is linked from the school website and includes, as a contributor, UConn Medical School professor, Dr. David Henderson.
  • In 2020, UConn Health Disparities Institute (HDI) was "requested to speak as a subject matter expert on policy and systems change, health equity, and racism at statewide and national forums" and "published 6 op-eds and articles...on COVID-19, health equity, and racism."
  • The School of Medicine for Graduate Medical Education has an anti-racism resource page, linking books including "How to be an Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi and articles such as "Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century."
Anti-Racism, Bias, and Diversity Training
  • The Health Disparities Institute has a Radical Healing webinar series "designed to introduce a framework for organizations and institutions to adopt the five principles of Radical Healing" to advance health equity. Per the website, radical healing is "the antidote to racial injustice. It is the medicine that promotes wellness in the face of identity-based 'wounds.' These wounds include those sustained by racist policies and practices, including exclusion from citizenship and the polity, extreme violence by those paid to serve and protect, and provision of substandard medical care."
  • The school's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee has "sponsored a number of initiatives to promote diversity" including "Implicit bias reduction training for committee staff."
Curriculum Changes and Requirements
  • The school offers a module titled "Racism within Medicine," which "aims to introduce an antiracist approach to practicing medicine in order to create a more equitable health care system for all racial groups."
  • The school has a Diversity Oversight Committee / Diversity Council, which is "a diverse group of faculty, staff, and trainees who are committed to promoting our values and priorities in diversity, equity, and inclusion." One goal of the committee is to "review existing curriculum, identify gaps and make recommendations regarding required education and annual retreats addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion topics."
  • UConn's Internal Medicine Program has a Health Equity Track, which is a "three-year longitudinal curriculum integrated within the main residency curriculum designed specifically for residents who envision working towards eliminating disparities in healthcare and recognizing root causes of health inequities." The school states that by the end of this track, "residents will receive the training necessary to address the diversity, health equity and inclusion (DEI) issues within their community."
Resources
  • The School of Medicine offers faculty development resources for "implicit bias modules."
  • The school provides a commitment to the tenets of DEI, stating that they "value diversity, equity and inclusion in all aspects of health care including providing excellent patient care, within our academic and professional communities, and in research" and aim to "foster a safe and supportive environment in graduate medical education."
  • UConn Health has a Graduate School DEI Committee.
  • The Health Disparities Institute hosted a town hall titled "Healing Covid-19 and Racism: Bridging Behavioral Health Gaps to Build Healthy Communities" and webinars "Say Her Name: Racial Profiling among Black Women During the Pandemic" and "Racial Profiling among Black Men and Boys During the Pandemic."
Symbolic Actions
  • UConn Health, the academic medical center of UConn School of Medicine, has a Diversity and Inclusion statement.
  • The school's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee has "revised" the medical school's Hippocratic oath to include "active pledges to identify and mitigate personal biases, to uphold human rights, to respond to medical myths with evidenced based information and without judgment, to actively support policies that promote social justice and specifically work to dismantle policies that perpetuate inequities, exclusion, discrimination, and racism."
  • On June 1, 2023, the school highlighted UConn Health’s involvement when the entire school “hosted the first The Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Research Day.”
  • On May 9, 2023, the Schools of Medicine and Dental Medicine released an article highlighting the winner of the Inaugural DEI Award of the Society for Biomaterials.
Last updated July 16th, 2024
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