Health Equity Curriculum

Providence St Vincent Internal Medicine Residency is committed to developing a work force for the future that is prepared to recognize and mitigate health inequities. As part of our commitment, we have a continually developing health equity and cultural humility curriculum featuring the following:

1. Our Faculty and Resident Health Equity Curriculum Committee meets quarterly (over pizza) to review the current equity-focused didactics and interactive conferences and decide what are the most important topics to cover in the next 6 months. In this way we are able to add to our backbone of health equity topic coverage by developing special focus on areas of interest to the residents—in recent years including a rotating schedule of lectures on Gender Affirming Care, a focus on Caring for Patients Experiencing Houselessness and Caring for People with Physical or Intellectual Disabilities
2. Each resident uses a health equity lens to examine the baseline data for their Quality Improvement project, working with our data analyst to detect differences based on race, ethnicity and primary language. Residents consider how their project is affecting health inequities in the PDSA cycles.
3. Our program is committed to excellent care for our patients with substance use disorder and in particular are trained to be confident in Office Based Opioid Treatment for our patients with Opioid Use Disorder and Medication Assisted Treatment for our patients with Alcohol Use Disorder.
4. Providence is committed to No Quality without Equity and supports a Health Equity Fellowship, a 12-month curriculum and practicum with grant funding available, aimed at redesigning healthcare to serve the needs of our most vulnerable members.
5. Our Narrative Medicine Elective offers opportunity to explore the importance of diverse stories and perspectives in the authentic care of patients.