Medicine Event Targets Discrimination
Picture this: you’re walking through a hallway with a colleague. You’re talking about the meeting you just left when suddenly someone yells a slur at your colleague. What do you do next?
An event hosted by the Faculty of Medicine’s Office of Inclusion and Diversity hopes to equip you with the skills and awareness to respond. Titled How to Become an Ally, it will run on October 30 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., at St. Michael’s College. It is open to all faculty members, students and staff.
“We talk a lot about diversity, but we’re really aiming to create a culture of inclusion,” says Anita Balakrishna, diversity strategist in the Faculty of Medicine. “We hear from people around the Faculty that they don’t always feel included, often due to discriminatory behavior by colleagues or patients or because others don’t speak out about stereotypes. So we want to provide the skills and tools to address these difficult situations, when they happen or after the incident.”
The event will facilitate a dialogue about how to be an ally to marginalized groups, including people with disabilities and mental health issues, and those who face discrimination based on race and gender. And, it will focus on effective ways to respond to discriminatory or exclusionary behavior in the university and clinical settings. Many of those tools will be based on Sinai Health System’s Are you an ALLY? campaign, which aims to combat discrimination and enable better and more equitable health care.
“Sinai has done a wonderful job of leading on allyship,” says Professor Stephanie Nixon, the director of the International Centre for Disability and Rehabilitation who will be a facilitator at the U of T event. “Their resources are publically available, but this will be the first time I’ve worked with their tools, so I’m really excited about that.”
Speakers will include Narina Nagra, a human rights and equity specialist from Sinai Health System, as well as Professor Lisa Robinson, the Faculty’s chief diversity officer and Dean Trevor Young.
Participants will learn direct and indirect ways to respond to behavior that is insensitive or hurtful. Indirect responses could include repeating an offensive statement without discriminatory language, changing the subject or leaving. More direct responses include clarifying what the perpetrator said, asking for more information, appealing to common values or simply stating an opinion contrary to the offensive comment.
Nixon notes that while ideas about privilege, oppression and allyship have been well developed in various disciplines outside medicine for decades, these ideas are relatively new for some health care institutions and medical schools.
Nixon says her practice of allyship is rooted in a growing understanding of her own positions of privilege, and that Faculty-wide people are increasingly interested in confronting discrimination, especially at the leadership level.
“My impression is that the dean and vice deans are taking this issue extremely seriously,” Nixon says. “They are making allyship a priority. This event reflects their engagement.”
