In response to persistently documented health disparities based on race and other demographic factors, medical schools have implemented "cultural competency" coursework. While many of these courses have focused on strategies for treating patients of different cultural backgrounds, very few have addressed the impact of the physician's own cultural background and offered methods to overcome his or her own unconscious biases. In hopes of training physicians to contextualize the impact of their own cultural background on their ability to provide optimal patient care, the authors created a 14-session course on culture, self-reflection, and medicine. After completing the course, students reported an increased awareness of their blind spots and that providing equitable care and treatment would require lifelong reflection and attention to these biases. In this article, the authors describe the formation and implementation of a novel medical school course on self-awareness and cultural identity designed to reduce unconscious bias in medicine. Finally, we discuss our observations and lessons learned after more than 10 years of experience teaching the course.

African Americans have coped with difficult and oppressive life circumstances from 1619 to present times. These circumstances have included extremes of physical and psychological abuse, torture, humiliation, racial intolerance and deprivation, and denial of all forms of freedoms. Ironically, and quite tragically, the very freedoms that blacks have been deprived of and denied are the very freedoms that have made this country a model for individual freedoms and rights for the world.

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