Building A Culture Of Social Accountability in Health Profession Training

Proposal: In July 2023, new family medicine program requirements were introduced incorporating various health equity-related activities and curriculum components. Achieving these tasks can be challenging for community-based residency programs outside of large academic medical centers to accomplish alone. Recognizing the difficulty, the New Mexico Primary Care Training Consortium (NMPCTC) seized the opportunity to support these programs. This presentation demonstrates how NMPCTC utilized the expertise of its staff to develop valuable resources and tools. They include a regionally specific toolkit for developing patient advisory boards, a longitudinal health equity curriculum that draws from the experiences and expertise of each residency program, and statewide presentations focused on various aspects of health equity. Following this presentation, the presenters will facilitate an interactive session with the audience. The discussion will focus on sharing their respective institutional endeavors aimed at teaching these ideas and implementing health equity curriculum. A space for others will be created to generate additional ideas for building a culture of social accountability in all health profession training.

Nicole Mandall is the Director of Operational Development at NMPCTC. She brings with her a Master of Public Health where her research focused on identifying and addressing the social determinants of health that lead to health inequity. Additionally, she has worked with the Peace Corps in Ethiopia and Ukraine looking at access to care and stigma reduction for people living with HIV/AIDS

Lezley Alba currently serves as a Graduate Medical Education (GME) Specialist with the New Mexico Primary Care Training Consortium. She is a passionate advocate for fostering health equity in underserved communities. Drawing from her foundation in healthcare delivery as a respiratory therapist, she has further contributed to this cause by serving as health equity specialist with the NM Department of Health and assuming leadership responsibilities within community health councils.

Mary Alice Scott is a medical anthropologist whose research has focused on addressing social and structural determinants of health in clinical settings as well as examining cultures of medicine to address equity issues that may be built into the cultures and structures of medical training. As executive director of the NMPCTC she has been supporting the team’s work that will be presented.

While the experience of the NMPCTC focuses specifically on family medicine-GME training these projects and resources are applicable and translatable to various health profession training programs.