Anti-racist Medical Education in the Transformation of Global Health

Abstract

The authors highlight the seldom-discussed history of racism in global health and its preceding fieldstropical health and international health. Moreover, they call for institutions to delineate a path towards an inclusive and anti-racist engagement in global health agendas. We concur with the authors' argument that an anti-racist medical education is essential for dismantling structural racism in global health.In this vein, we want to highlight the report by Hess et al. as one useful template for anti-racist global health curricula. 2 The report chronicles how the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) implemented strategies to address racism and bias within every sphere of medical education. The authors mentioned that ISMMS responded to medical student advocacy against racism by establishing the institution-wide Racism and Bias Initiative (RBI), which focused on recognizing the historical foundations of racism and bias in medicine and implementing comprehensive strategies that address racism in medical education. Instead of adopting strategies that are assessed based on finite endpoints, the RBI proposed an evolving model designed for continuous transformation, which here refers to a profound revamping of frames of reference that constitute the ways in which one thinks and acts on certain subjects. 3 The RBI was led by a guiding coalition of individuals from different parts of ISMMS's ecosystem devoted to a multiphase change management process focusing on people rather than the institutional component of change. 2 The rationale for such an approach was that overlooking the individual sphere of transformation resulted in failed initiatives since the people who adopt institutional changes must themselves transform if they are to be successful in effecting a lasting transformation of their institutions. 2,4 In line with growing awareness of the colonial legacy of racism in global health, institutions need a multifaceted approach to forego the principles of cultural hierarchy that underlie the skewed influence of those from the "global North" on their partners in the "global South." 5 We believe that the anti-racist initiative at ISMMS can constructively inform the creation of institutions that promote a bright and transformative future for the field of global health. Since global health is a discipline focused on problems that are global in scope, 6 global health practices based on multidimensional and multiphase initiatives centering on global health practitioners themselves may result in institution-wide, and perhaps discipline-wide, progress towards a reimagined field that is, indeed, inclusive and anti-racist