Suspending Student Selections to Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society: How One School Is Navigating the Intersection of Equity and Wellness

Abstract

Medical education must provide students with a delicate balance of academic rigor, equity, and wellness. While the medical education community espouses all these values, the authors believe the way medical students are evaluated and rewarded undermines equity and wellness. Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society (AΩA) membership is arguably the highest honor that a medical student can achieve. In the short term, it opens doors to the most selective training opportunities, and in the long term, ushers students into an elite group of future physician leaders. Yet recent data have demonstrated that AΩA is disproportionately awarded to white students. At Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS), the authors observed that students underrepresented in science and medicine were persistently underrepresented among those selected for AΩA. They describe efforts at ISMMS to reduce bias in the selection process and the ultimate decision to suspend medical student selection for AΩA altogether. The authors argue that selection to AΩA reinforces the structural biases and social privilege that are embedded in medical education and undermines the ability to deliver an educational experience that has as its core tenets equity and wellness. Suspending participation in student selection for AΩA is an important step toward recognizing that medical school learning environments continue to privilege white students over students who are underrepresented in medicine.

Association of Marginalized Identities With Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society and Gold Humanism Honor Society Membership Among Medical Students

“…In addition, following the example of University of California San Francisco, Mount Sinai, and Washington University at St Louis, among others, medical schools may consider conducting internal reviews of honor society membership for sociodemographic disparities. These reviews may incorporate a comprehensive view of diversity that includes race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, and SES, among other factors.…”

Disparities in race/ethnicity and gender among medical student graduation award recipients

“…These findings build upon recent work identifying inequities in the awards received by learners at both the undergraduate (UME) and graduate medical education (GME) levels. Within UME, seminal work by Boatright and Wijesekera identified racial/ethnic disparities in Alpha Omega Alpha honor society induction [4,47], resulting in alterations to the AΩA selection processes within some medical schools and termination of AΩA at others [10,35,43]. Wijesekera further identified that women were twice as likely to receive Gold Humanism Honor Society recognition compared with men [47].…”

General Surgery Residency Match: Time for More than a Virtual Change

“…25 Second, racial disparities have been demonstrated for AOA selection resulting in less Black and Asian students being selected. 26 , 27 , 28 Finally, not all medical schools have AOA or GHHS chapters. 29 …”