Student Perspectives on Dismantling Racial Bias in Pharmacy School Education

Abstract

It is well-established that race is a social construct that has little to no biological relevance in the absence of context such as the significant impact of the social, political, and environmental systems that contribute to health and health inequities. However, pharmacy school curricula often misrepresent race as the basis of disease diagnosis and reinforce race-based clinical guidelines without contextualization. Pharmacy schools, through the partnership of students and faculty, should 1) contextualize the mention of race and the differences in disease burden, and 2) provide evidence for race-based guidelines and clinical decision-making in education materials. In this way, we can work to halt the perpetuation of teaching bias to future healthcare professionals.

Addressing inequities in pharmaceutical education with an International Pharmaceutical Federation toolkit

“…Educational inequities collectively lead to different access to schooling, retention, and, more importantly, the learning process (Schmelkes, 2020). While these attributes may be true for pharmacy education as for other education majors, studies from pharmacy education literature have underscored specific educational inequities as well, such as implicit or unconscious bias (Prasad-Reddy et al, 2022), gender inequity, sexual harassment, and specifically racial bias (Sofeso et al, 2022).…”