Executive summary of the SAEM 2022 consensus conference to address racism in emergency medicine clinical research, training, and leadership

Abstract

Introduction Racism has not only contributed to disparities in health care outcomes, but also has negatively impacted the recruitment, retention, and promotion of historically excluded groups in academic medicine. The 2022 Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) consensus conference, “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Developing a Research Agenda for Addressing Racism in Emergency Medicine,” convened a diverse group of researchers, educators, administrative leaders, and health care providers to help address the impact of racism in three domains in academic emergency medicine: clinical research, education and training, and academic leadership. The main goals of the consensus process were to identify current knowledge gaps and create a research agenda within each domain using an iterative consensus‐building methodology. Methods The planning committee identified three fundamental domains to develop a research agenda and created workgroups who completed a literature search to identify gaps in knowledge. After a consensus building process, potential questions were presented at the in‐person consensus conference. Ninety SAEM members representing faculty and trainees participated in breakout groups in each domain to generate consensus recommendations for priority research. Results For clinical research, three research gaps with six questions (n) were identified: remedies for bias and systematic racism (3), biases and heuristics in clinical care (2), and racism in study design (1). For education and training, three research gaps with seven questions were identified: curriculum and assessment (2), recruitment (1), and learning environment (4). For academic leadership, three research gaps with five questions were identified: understanding the current diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) landscape and culture (1), analyzing programs that improve DEI and identifying factors that lead to improved diversity (3), and quantifying the value of professional stewardship activities (1). Conclusion This article reports the results of the consensus conference with the goal of influencing emergency care research, education, and policy and facilitating collaborations, grant funding, and publications in these domains.

Identifying the prevalence and characteristics of diversity, equity, and inclusion leaders in academic emergency medicine

“…Recently, at an SAEM consensus conference on addressing racism, participants identified current research gaps and called for investigators to study the current EM DEI landscape, identify DEI initiatives and metrics, and improve standards in DEI leadership promotion and professional development 7 . Notably, similar challenges have been described for EM roles such as the vice chair for education 8 .…”