An Abolitionist Approach to Antiracist Medical Education

Abstract

Medical education is limited to the biomedical model, omitting critical discourse about racism, the harm it causes minoritized patients, and medicine's foundation and complicity in perpetuating racism. Against a backdrop of historical resistance from medical education leadership, medical students' advocacy for antiracism in medicine continues. This article highlights a medical student-led antiracist curricular effort that moves beyond a biomedical model and uses abolition as the guiding framework in the creation process, the content itself, and iterative reflection through further study and dissemination.The American Medical Association designates this journal-based CME activity for a maximum of 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™ available through the AMA Ed Hub TM . Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Historical Primer on Obstetrics and Gynecology Health Inequities in America

“…80,81 Anti-racism training based in abolition medicine, critical race theory, and decolonization frameworks, rather than, "sanitized, apologetic frameworks centering White [individuals'] comfort and passivity, such as racial disparities and cultural competency.renders the invisibility of Whiteness visible to highlight its role in upholding medical racism and preventing change." 82 Addressing the cause of racial disparities is likely more effective than just focusing on the outcomes of racism.…”

“…Inclusion of anti‐racism training as an Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) common program requirement is an actionable step to encourage learning environments to operationalize anti-racism. 81 As part of an anti-racism core competency, the history of U.S. slavery and its effect on medicine would highlight the, “false premise of racial groups as distinct biological populations…and the role of racism as a preventable etiology of racial health disparities.” 80 , 81 Anti-racism training based in abolition medicine, critical race theory, and decolonization frameworks, rather than, “sanitized, apologetic frameworks centering White [individuals'] comfort and passivity, such as racial disparities and cultural competency…renders the invisibility of Whiteness visible to highlight its role in upholding medical racism and preventing change.” 82 Addressing the cause of racial disparities is likely more effective than just focusing on the outcomes of racism.…”

Teaching the Legacy of Slavery in American Medicine and Psychiatry to Medical Students: Feasibility, Acceptability, Opportunities for Growth

“…Organized medicine increasingly recognizes how foundational this legacy is for challenging health inequities, 11 yet few prior examples of integration into medical school curricula exist. 23 The workshop demonstrated that covering this vast history in a 90-minute lecture is feasible, including when using a virtual format, and that this format can heighten students' self-reported knowledge and awareness of slavery's historical arcs of oppression, particularly related to forced scientific experimentation other than the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and how a narrative of racial difference influences diagnosis and treatment. Medical students' limited exposure to this legacy prior to attending this workshop reinforces the urgent need to address this educational gap.…”

“…It reimagines the work of medicine as an anti-racist practice by abolishing practices reinforcing biological race, desegregating the medical profession, demanding reparations for communities devastated by forced medical experimentation, and insisting on longitudinal anti-racism training rooted in the history of racism in medicine. 23 , 24 …”

A Call for a Transformative Public Health Training: The Necessity of Abolition

“…Current pedagogical examples of interrogating structural racism, including the PIC, are limited (Chandler et al, 2022; Rice, 2022). However, there are some examples of public health faculty who teach courses related to the public health impacts of criminalization and mass incarceration (Duarte et al, 2020; Fullilove et al, 2020; Heller & Galea, 2020; Nowotny et al, 2020; Rice, 2022) as well as efforts in social work (James, 2021) and medicine (Asmerom et al, 2022) that integrate abolition into the curriculum. Echoing other recent calls, there is a need for academic public health to generate scholarship and train professionals on the population health consequences of the PIC and develop community-led strategies to reduce incarceration (Heller & Galea, 2020).…”