2024 Building Trust Through Diversity, Health Care Equity, Inclusion and Diagnostic Excellence in Internal Medicine Training Grant Program
In August 2024, the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine (AAIM), the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), the ABIM Foundation, the American College of Physicians (ACP), and the Gordan and Betty Moore Foundation awarded a total of $400,000, split among 16 projects at medical schools and training programs across the US.
Learn more about the selected projects:
- Alameda Health System – Highland Hospital ($40,000): The project team will create an updated home visit curriculum to deepen residents’ knowledge of specific social determinants of health that impact the community they serve. The curriculum will include both didactic elements and direct patient and community engagement through home visits. Residents will be trained to perform comprehensive health needs assessments, using tools such as social needs screening and partnering with patients to identify and address social determinants of health.
- Henry Ford Health ($10,000): Develop a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ) Scholars Quarterly Grand Rounds (to bring in outside scholars with expertise to further resident knowledge) and a Community Engaged Focused Group to inform the Scholars annual health fair, which is designed around community needs. These will enhance Henry Ford’s existing DEIJ Scholar track by identifying national partners to help build a national network and by including the community voice in outreach efforts.
- Medical University of South Carolina ($20,000): The project team will launch a community outreach initiative to implement point of care testing within the unhoused population to improve management of chronic diseases (hypertension, diabetes, hepatitis C) and promote health equity.
- Meharry Medical College ($20,000): The project team will educate patients and physicians about DEI and health care delivery, using pre- and post-intervention surveys to measure their perceptions. Participants will receive mental health first aid as an incentive for participation.
- Long Island Jewish Medical Center ($10,000): Develop educational intervention to teach concrete person-centered language (PCL) documentation skills and reinforce a culture of PCL in documentation within the department of medicine. The project team will conduct a targeted needs assessment, and develop goals, objectives and educational strategies, including a learning module. (Stanford School of Medicine will be a partner in the work.)
- Phoenix Indian Medical Center, Indian Health Service ($20,000): This grant will fund the development of an interdisciplinary curriculum to enhance diagnostic skills among medical students and residents that integrates the cultural, social and economic contexts of American Indian health needs.
- Southern Regional Medical Center ($20,000): This grant will fund monthly pop-up clinics staffed by internal medicine residents, who will provide hypertension and diabetes screening services, chronic disease self-management education, medication counseling, and health-related social needs evaluation.
- The University of Chicago ($40,000): The project team will create an evidence-based curriculum to address clinician bias toward patients with sickle cell disease (SCD). They will identify areas for clinical improvement through a study of physician notes and key clinical outcomes and convene patient focus groups to inform the curriculum. Their goals are to reduce frequency and degree of negative thoughts and biased language by clinicians discussing patients with SCD and improve care and clinical outcomes.
- University of Maryland Capital Region Health ($40,000): Implement a three-year interdisciplinary food prescription program in a residency training clinic; the program will feature recurrent patient interaction and a platform for monitoring patient outcomes such as A1C and BMI. Participating patients will have diabetes and/or obesity and will also meet food insecurity criteria; they will receive access to a food pharmacy on-site.
- University of Minnesota ($40,000): Complete and implement an interdisciplinary human rights-based interdisciplinary advocacy curriculum that will be informed by focus groups and workshops.
- University of Texas Rio Grande Valley ($40,000): Promote health and increased patient education in predominantly Hispanic populations served by student-run clinic by using residents to educate patients about managing diabetes and hypertension and colorectal cancer screenings. Residents, medical students and nurses working at the clinic will also receive instruction on social determinants of health.
- University of Washington ($10,000): The project team will develop an assessment tool to understand current practices and barriers to the use of interpreters in skilled nursing facilities. The study aims to improve patient communication and equity by using translation devices where professional interpreter services are unavailable.
- Vanderbilt University Medical Center ($40,000): Develop medical simulation training to enhance competency of health care professionals in providing inclusive and sensitive care to LGBTQ+ patients and test a proposed guideline for supporting transgender and gender diverse standardized patients who participate in medical simulation activities.
- Washington University ($40,000): Develop a faculty development curriculum series on building inclusive learning environments and enhancing equitable observation, assessment and feedback. The curriculum will be developed by an inter-professional team of clinicians and researchers.
- Washington University ($10,000): The project team will create a pathway project for high school students interested in sexual and gender minority (SGM) health outcomes – offering them educational and career support for a health care career. The project goals are to introduce participants to the health needs of SGM communities, increase their interest in a health care career and the process involved in pursuing one, and provide them with mentorship to support their education and career paths.
- Zuckerberg San Francisco General, University of California-San Francisco ($20,000): Through this project, internal medicine residents will learn, practice and reflect on bias mitigation skills while admitting patients to a safety net hospital. Residents will review educational material on bias mitigation strategies and admit a patient to the hospital while employing those strategies; they will complete a survey that includes a self-evaluation of their diagnostic certainty related to any diagnoses made during patient’s admission.
