Yale School of Medicine

The Department of Psychiatry’s Anti-Racism Task Force’s Education Subcommittee “is charged with addressing the legacy of racism on training, increasing the representation of BIPOC individuals, anti-racism training efforts, social justice and healthy equity curricula, and interfacing with the clinical subcommittee regarding the clinical context of training.” The subcommittee will be prioritizing “anti-racism education.”

The school announced on social media, “The Dean’s Committee for Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice was created as a result, and the school’s Educational Policy and Curriculum Committee (EPCC) began looking into the curriculum. In March 2018, an EPCC subcommittee recommended enhancing opportunities for health equity research, creating a certificate in health justice, promoting professional development, establishing a social mission statement, and showing a commitment to faculty diversity. Two key elements of the plan were weaving a health equity thread throughout all four years of medical school and creating a requirement for community service.”

The Yale Infectious Diseases Section of the Department of Medicine has developed the "Diversity Equity and Anti-racism Roadmap" curriculum, which aims to "Establish an educational roadmap for faculty and trainees to enhance their knowledge, skills, and attitudes to address structural and cultural bias and racism," "Provide equitable access and care to all our patients and thus improve their health outcomes," and "Enhance professional development and institutional changes to promote diversity and inclusion."

The school's July 2023-June 2024 "Curriculum Summary for Advanced Health Sciences Research Course Participants" includes a course titled "Fundamentals of Critical Race Theory" and a course titled "The challenges of researcher and subjects in the context of race, class, and ethnicity."

The school offers Anti-Racism Resources, including a video of Robin DiAngelo discussing “White Fragility” and Ibram X. Kendi’s “How To Be An Antiracist.”

The Department of Psychiatry’s Anti-Racism Task Force was “designed to address racism in the same vein as the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The Department of Psychiatry’s Anti-Racism Task Force’s Education Subcommittee will “make recommendations for a departmental grand rounds series on anti-racism. Each session in the series would be followed by group discussions and some type of call to action.”

The school held a “GIM Development Retreat on Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).”

The Yale School of Medicine’s Child Study Center held an event titled, “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind,” as “part of Grand Rounds, an ongoing program in which clinicians and others in the field lecture students and faculty,” Bari Weiss reports. One of the learning objectives of the event was to “understand how white people are psychologically dependent on black rage.”

In February of 2022, the Yale School of Medicine announced on Facebook that, with the support of "the Minority Organization for Retention and Expansion (MORE); Diversity, Inclusion, Community Engagement, and Equity (DICE); YNHHS Office of Diversity & Inclusion; YNHH Medical Staff Fund, and the Graduate Medical Education Office," the school will host a "a virtual recruitment dinner for underrepresented in medicine (URiM) residency applicants."

In February of 2022, the school highlighted on Facebook a talk given within the Section of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology in the Department of Internal Medicine. The talk's topic was "Enhancing Diversity and Reducing Implicit Bias in Rheumatology."

In November of 2021, the school highlighted on its Facebook page its Yale West Campus Showcase event targeted for middle school and high school students. This event "was focused on the theme 'Belonging in Science,' which was inspired by initiatives to increase diversity and inclusion in STEM fields."

In October of 2021, the school took to Facebook to highlight that, “the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Minority Health and Health Equity (OMHHE) has awarded a $3 million contract to Yale School of Medicine (YSM) to promote clinical trial education, awareness, and access for underrepresented minorities. In April of 2018, the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation and the Office of Minority Health and Health Equity had developed plans which “include collaborations to cultivate and advance the Yale Cultural Ambassadors Program and the engagement of community partners to increase participation of diverse and historically underrepresented or underserved populations in clinical research.”

In September of 2021, Yale School of Medicine highlighted on Facebook a new paper which was written in the hopes that it “convinces physicians and other providers to obtain the training in cultural competency necessary to take best care of all patients with anxiety and depression, especially those from racial and ethnic minoritized populations who see this as vital to their care.”

In September of 2021, the school highlighted the creation of the Yale Black Postdoctoral Association on Facebook.

The school announced on Facebook that in April of 2021, “Yale School of Medicine’s (YSM) Cushing/Whitney Medical Library (CWML) launched a new webpage that aggregates the library’s expanding diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) resources.”

In May of 2021, the school highlighted its Program to Advance Training in Health and Sciences which is geared to help students from “underrepresented backgrounds.”

The school hosted an event titled, "The Uses of Anger." The event pairs Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of Anger,” with "the prologue to Carol Anderson’s recent book, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. Anderson’s work takes an long view of white supremacist policymaking since the Civil War, rooting the denial of Black citizenship in a long-entrenched white rage."

The school "organized and sponsored a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) symposium in Puerto Rico."

The school's Child Study Center has a "DEIB Action Group," whose "efforts are focused on helping to develop innovative ways to interrupt the norms within center policies, practices, and culture with the intent to increase diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging."

Women’s Health Research at Yale's "Council of community-based advisors recently spoke" with the medical school’s Chief Diversity Officer and Deputy Dean for Diversity and Inclusion "about the Yale School of Medicine’s plan to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and a sense of belonging (DEIB). The Council’s own DEIB Committee was eager to learn about the school’s plan as WHRY initiates listening sessions on DEIB with leaders in women’s health, health care and equity from inside academia and across the region."

The 2022 Morris Dillard lecture is called "Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools: A Roundtable Discussion."

The 2022 Selma & Karl Folkers Lecture was "Challenging the Past and Charting a New Future: Legacies of Racism in Science and Medicine."

On April 25, 2023, the school reported that Miraj Desai, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, "was invited to participate in Catalyze, a national summit on race and health equity organized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation." The summit took place in April of 2023.

On March 27, 2023, the school announced that a talk would be given by Rana Hogarth, Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, that would "highlight slavery’s little studied role in the development of eugenicists’ opinions about the fitness of mixed-race people with Black and white ancestry in the Americas."

In September of 2021, the Yale School of Medicine Facebook page highlighted Yale studies which postulate that “the protocol known as SOFA could promote racial disparities in treatment outcomes.”

In July of 2021, the school announced on Facebook that it has appointed a “YSM Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) faculty associate for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) educator development.”

On June 10, 2020, the school announced on social media that it would participate in the #ShutDownAcademia and #ShutDownStem movement.

On June 11, 2020, the school released a statement in response to the death of George Floyd on social media.

On June 29, 2023, the school published its response to the Supreme Court's decision regarding race-conscious admission policies and stated the following: “I write now to reaffirm the commitment of Yale School of Medicine (YSM) to diversity and inclusive excellence. As I wrote to the community in February, at YSM we believe that enrolling talented and hardworking students from diverse backgrounds promotes intellectual creativity and enhances curiosity, compassion, and commitment to the care of all patients. The YSM admissions committee evaluates candidates using a holistic approach and considers each applicant’s commitment to medicine, maturity, and resilience, as well as measures of academic preparation, such as grades and MCAT scores. This will not change. Even prior to the SCOTUS decisions, the YSM admissions committee has been considering how we can most effectively assess the breadth of experiences of our applicants, while complying with the law. Additional review of the decisions will inform future admissions practices as we work to ensure compliance with the new legal standard announced today."