Safe & Healthy Learning Environment Resources

Additional readings on creating a safe and healthy learning environment are listed below.

• Checklist for Assessing Bias in Medical Education: Feinberg has repurposed a checklist created by Amy Caruso Brown, MD, MSc, MSCS, of Upstate Medical University to assist lecturers in evaluating their training for bias.
• Writing Bias-Free Letters of Recommendation: See best practices for Feinberg educators to follow in order to write fair, accurate descriptions of student performance in recommendation letters.

Understanding and Moving Beyond Bias and Microaggressions

• Examples of Microaggression
• Addressing Microaggressions in Academic Health: A Workshop for Inclusive Excellence
• Feinberg Safe Space Program: An initiative to educate allies, advancing Feinberg's goal of creating an inclusive community in which everyone is treated with respect and dignity
• Setting Expectations & Tips for Small Groups: This tip sheet was developed by Feinberg students to provide guidance on conducting inclusive small group sessions where all students feel welcome; faculty and students should review it together during their first small-group meeting

Disability Advocacy

• Disability Language Style Guide
• Web Accessibility Guidelines
• Student Accommodations
• Seven Ways to be More Inclusive of People with Disabilities

Clinical Partner Community Reports

The reports below from our partners are used to identify prevalent health needs among residents across all socioeconomic groups, races and ethnicities.

• Northwestern Medicine
• Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago
• Shirley Ryan AbilityLab

Related Articles & Publications

• Can a Checklist Ameliorate Implicit Bias in Medical Education?: A brief report about using a checklist to ameliorate bias in the curriculum at SUNY Upstate; the report includes excellent checklist (available as online RedCap survey or as downloadable pdf) with good examples
• Addressing Race, Culture, and Structural Inequality in Medical Education: A Guide for Revising Teaching Cases: This guide to assessing bias, applied to Aquifer cases, includes "Race and Culture Guide for Editors of Teaching Cases"; the full guide is available as a supplemental digital appendix
• Race Matters? Examining and Rethinking Race Portrayal in Preclinical Medical Education: Medical students at Brown University analyzed M1 and M2 lectures and found that when race was mentioned in lecture it nearly always suggested biological risk
• Guidelines for Promoting a Bias-Free Curriculum: Medical students at Columbia University, inspired by Tsai paper from Brown, developed these guidelines (also discussed in Letters to the Editor in Acad Med)
• How Clinicians and Educators Can Mitigate Implicit Bias in Patient Care and Candidate Selection in Medical Education
• Proceedings of the Diversity and Inclusion Innovation Forum: Unconscious Bias in Academic Medicine
• Simple Strategies for Combating Microaggressions in the Workplace
• Dorothy Roberts: The Problem with Race-Based Medicine
• Walden University: Scholarly Voice: Avoiding Bias
• Changing How Race Is Portrayed in Medical Education: Recommendations from Medical Students
• Institute for Healing & Justice in Medicine
• Setting Expectations & Tips for All in Small Groups: This document has been modified from the Guide for Inclusive Teaching at Columbia University