CCHE would like to share a recent piece from Inside Higher Ed on why some underrepresented faculty members leave academic institutions.
‘In Our Own Words: Institutional Betrayals’ collects honest rationales in lieu of exhaustive climate surveys. The opinions expressed in this piece echo experiences we’ve heard reported often over the years at our Health Equity Leadership Institute (HELI). HELI focuses on increasing the number of investigators, particularly underrepresented racial/ethnic (UR) investigators, engaged in health disparities research to achieve health equity. Increasing the number of investigators requires recruiting and retaining them. Our HELI content has been modified each cohort in response to hearing junior scholars’ stories. We’ve shared our methods and we’re planning to celebrate the ten year anniversary of the HELI program this June!
Locally, CCHE Associate Directors, Angela Byars-Winston, PhD & Christine Sorkness, PharmD, are addressing this challenge in collaboration with UW SMPH via the Building Equitable Access to Mentorship (BEAM) Program. This offering pairs UR faculty and UR medical students with the primary goal to support talent development in first year medical students by building self-efficacy for degree completion and cultural navigation skills. Read more about BEAM here.
Read the Inside Higher Ed piece here.