Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2024
DOI
10.1186/s12909-024-05302-8
Publication Title
BMC Medical Education
Volume
24
Pages
327 (1-9)
Abstract
Background: There is a motivation for organizations to understand race and racism from the perspective of minoritized individuals. Academic health centers (AHC) are ideal organizations to have these conversations as they educate healthcare providers, support research in health disparities, and care for diverse patients.
Methods: We piloted and evaluated a virtual Modified Privilege Walk (MPW) with faculty, staff, and students at an AHC in July 2020 to promote difficult conversations about race/racism, social class, and privilege. Each MPW session was voluntary, held virtually over Zoom, and lasted one hour and thirty minutes. Before attending, participants answered questions based on their race/ethnicity and social class to calculate a "privilege score." After each session, attendees were asked to complete an evaluation survey.
Results: There were five virtual MPWs with 132 attendees, and 74 participants completed an evaluation survey (56% response rate). Many respondents were students (n = 29, 39.2%). Most respondents either agreed (n = 36, 48.6%) or strongly agreed (n = 32, 43.2%) that the virtual MPW positively impacted how they will interact with those of a different race/ethnicity. Attendees requested having more virtual MPWs with leadership, incorporating virtual MPWs in various program curricula, and requiring new employees to participate.
Conclusions: American organizations, particularly AHCs, should provide safe spaces and support these discussions surrounding race and racism as many were founded, built, or operated during a time of free labor and segregation that exerted power and control over minoritized individuals. Authors provide recommendations to dismantle organizational racism and support minoritized employees, patients, and students.
Rights
© 2024 The Authors.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original authors and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0 1.0) Universal waiver applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Data Availability
Article states: "All figures created using Excel. The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available as it may allow others to identify participants. For additional details concerning data analysis, please contact Dr. Elizabeth A. Brown at eabrown@odu.edu."
Original Publication Citation
Brown, E. A., & Jones, R. (2024). Discussing systemic racism and racial privilege at a large, academic health center using a modified privilege walk. BMC Medical Education, 24(1), 1-9, Article 327. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-024-05302-8
Repository Citation
Brown, Elizabeth A. and Jones, Rosemarie, "Discussing Systemic Racism and Racial Privilege at a Large, Academic Health Center Using a Modified Privilege Walk" (2024). Community & Environmental Health Faculty Publications. 177.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/commhealth_fac_pubs/177