Race Equity Month 2024

What is Race Equity Month?  

The Council of Deans of Health has dedicated a month to exploring issues around racism in healthcare education. As a sector, we still have a long way to go to ensure that both our academic leaders and students we recruit reflect the breadth of our society. In an introductory video Andrea Cameron, Chair of the CoDH EDI Strategic Policy Group, opens Race Equity Month 2024 and highlights the variety of activities and resources that the Council of Deans will be releasing this month.

Welcome from Andrea Cameron, EDI Strategic Policy Group Chair

Latest Webinars and Podcasts 

This podcast will focus on staff-student co-production initiatives as part of the Racial and Cultural Equity working group at the London School of Occupational Therapy to address colour-evasive racial ideologies underpinning their hidden curriculum. Jou Yin Teoh, Dr Ayana Horton, Mandy Achinivu and Zeth Cabildo discuss their experiences of participating in this journey across the past five years from both staff and student perspectives, sharing lessons learnt as well as offering a glimpse of future directions. Also on Apple Podcast, Amazon Music and other platforms!

  • Watch Again: How do we attract the next generation of academics from diverse backgrounds?

This webinar explores how we can develop a more diverse academic workforce. Currently academics teaching in nursing, midwifery and allied health professionals courses do not reflect the ethnic diversity of the student or general population. We discuss ideas on how to encourage more racially minoritised students to pursue an academic career. Watch now!

  • Podcast: Simulated practice learning and anti-racism | More information coming out soon

In this podcast, we will speak to Dr Pamina Mitter, Dr Chris Kowalski and Robyn Stiger about their innovative project to develop an interprofessional simulation course for medical and nursing students with reflective scenarios around lived experiences of racism in practice.

Latest blogs

  • Inclusive Training within Practice by Noor Nixon, UWE Bristol | More information coming out soon

This blog will discuss a project and resources being developed that will be available to healthcare students on the NHS Learning Hub. The blog will have a focus on workforce culture and behaviour change through training resources that address the root cause of racism and discrimination.

This blog discusses racial disparities in midwifery leadership, where white individuals dominate senior roles, and calls on those with white privilege to actively engage in anti-racist actions. It encourages self-education, challenging discrimination, and supporting underrepresented colleagues to foster a more inclusive and equitable environment.

This blog will explore how CARIN (Clinical Academic Roles and Career Pathways Implementation Network) is supporting inclusive and accessible clinical academic careers, as well as its key EDI principles that are authentically embedded in CARIN’s work programmes, activities and governance structure.

This blog offers reflections on peer support and inclusivity for students facing racism on placement and at University. It gives the perspective of an international student, studying in the UK.

This blog is on a project that is being used as part of the curriculum in Wales, and the premise of the programme is built around inequalities and inequities in healthcare. Danny taught the history of how human skin has developed through an anti-racist lens, using the story of melanin in evolution. It leads into how healthcare has framed and perpetuated the idea of the perfect skin model as “caucasian” with little to no diversity in the images used in education, similarly with information available to patients.

This blog explores the intersection of race with neurodiversity in health and social care education and practice, emphasising the need for both training and practical actions to create inclusive environments. It highlights how socio-economic background, gender, and other factors shape experiences, urging more inclusive policies and practices.

This blog captures how EDI has been embedded across the workstreams of our different strategic policy groups (SPGs) over the past year and our commitment to ensure an EDI perspective is central to the work agendas for the upcoming year.

Since our first Race Equity Month in 2021, we have continued to share a series of events, podcasts, videos and blogs. Catch up with some of our previous events/webinars by clicking here.