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1/ Below I'll dissect the original manuscript "Suspending Student Selections to Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society: How One School Is Navigating the Intersection of Equity and Wellness" so folks understand its importance.
This is A THREAD. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/09/05/643298219/a-medical-school-tradition-comes-under-fire-for-racism
This is A THREAD. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/09/05/643298219/a-medical-school-tradition-comes-under-fire-for-racism
2/ This manuscript describes the decision by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to suspend selecting students to the Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) Honor Medical Society.
3/ Being selected to AOA is considered the highest honor given in medical schools and increases the likelihood of being interviewed by the most selective residency programs in the country.
4/ Basically, the honor plays a significant factor in a medical student’s professional success.
(Note: I prefer to use “minoritized” vs “minority” "URM” since social constructs exist that give Black, Latino and Indigenous students less power &
representation in society.)
(Note: I prefer to use “minoritized” vs “minority” "URM” since social constructs exist that give Black, Latino and Indigenous students less power &
representation in society.)
5/ First, I would like to note that it was the minoritized students (as it typically is!) at Mount Sinai who brought to attention to the fact that out of 120 students inducted into AOA over 5 years, only 5 were minoritized students.
6/ Each class is about 18-20% minoritized students so that comes out to 1-2 minoritized students per year being selected for AOA (!).
7/ As substantiated by literature, white students have an advantage because they are “more often given the benefit of the doubt in subjective academic performance or disciplinary action, more likely to receive mentoring, and to have close friends and family in medicine.”
8/ The authors make the case that structural inequities prior to and during medical school create an unfair and unjust system for minoritized students to even be elected to AOA.
9/ Prior to medical school, minoritized students must deal with the compromised K-12 educational pipeline, “everyday racism”, lack of social/parental/familial privilege, stereotype threat, and internalized racism.
10/ Then during medical school, they face a lack of social support, lack of racial concordance in teaching/mentoring/sponsorship, bias in subjective academic evaluation, and mistreatment due to race. All of this well documented in the medical education literature.
11/ The school tried to see what would happen if they increased the diversity of the AOA selection committee, if the committee members underwent unconscious bias training and relied less on subjective metrics.
12/ However, the numbers of minoritized students selected barely budged given the weight of traditional academic metrics in the selection criteria. In order to foster an equitable learning environment, the school decided to suspend selection of students to AOA.
13/ This piece demonstrates how the structural barriers of racism are not simply additive, but compound each other.
14/ Even by attempting to mitigate the bias of committee members or the composition of the selection committee, the numbers did not change which speaks to the expansive reach of structural inequities encountered by minoritized students preceding and during medical school.
15/ Here is link to the pdf of the manuscript: https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Abstract/publishahead/Suspending_Student_Selections_to_Alpha_Omega_Alpha.97374.aspx#pdf-link
16/ Thank you to authors, especially Giselle Lynch, who led the effort as a medical student, and Ann-Gel Palermo, the Chief program officer of the Office for Diversity and Inclusion at Mount Sinai. Also to @MaraGordonMD for amplifying the article in the lay media.
17/ I strongly encourage other medical schools (they know who there are ;)) to follow suit with @IcahnMountSinai .
