Integrating the Multicultural Veterinary Medical Association actionables into diversity, equity, and inclusion curricula in United States veterinary colleges

Abstract

E vents such as the COVID-19 pandemic, police brutality, and climate change have exposed how structural factors such as politics, economics, and infrastructure impact human health, particularly the health of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Structural racism is defined as "the totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination, through mutually reinforcing inequitable systems (in housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, criminal justice, and so on) that in turn reinforce discriminatory beliefs, values, and distribution of resources." 1,2 Numerous studies have demonstrated the blatant yet pernicious nature of structural racism in human medicine-across the scale from individual clinical decisions to broad institutional policies-and how structural racism leads to adverse patient outcomes. [2][3][4][5][6][7] For example, at the individual, clinical level, Black and Hispanic/Latino patients presenting to the emergency room are less likely to receive analgesia compared to White patients, despite no difference in patient pain level or physicians' ability to assess pain. 8-10 At a broader institutional level, until this past year, 11 the standard of practice has been to use race-based, estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) equations to assess kidney function. These eGFR equations use a higher coefficient for Black patients, assuming higher kidney function than white patients with equivalent blood chemistry (ie, serum creatinine) and consequently delaying time to diagnosis of kidney failure and dialysis. 12,13 The above are only a sampling of the numerous examples of how structural racism transcends scales of care and can lead to health inequalities and poor patient outcomes in human medicine. 14,15 Cerdeña et al 14 write, "It is increasingly

Perceived role of the veterinarian in promoting dairy cattle welfare

“…This underscores that veterinarians are not monolithic and cannot be described by a generalized construction of ‘a veterinarian’. The veterinary profession is described as having diverse societal, cultural, and individual views on animals ( 59 ) yet lacking the diversity representative of the populations they serve ( 60 ). The use of humanities and social science approaches in additional research could begin to address complex problems facing veterinary medicine such as decreasing numbers of large animal care practitioners, societal expectations for the profession, and veterinarians’ mental health ( 61 ).…”