PC2101: Anti-racist and Anti-colonial Content Within US Global Health Curricula

Background: There is increased recognition of deeply rooted and persistent racist and colonialist practices in global health (GH); and a strong desire to address them through dialogue and education. However, there is a paucity of information on anti-racist and anti-colonial education for global health trainees. This study aims to identify current curricular strengths and weaknesses in anti-racism and anti-colonialism education for pediatric, family medicine and emergency medicine GH trainees.

Methods: We developed a survey inquiring about global health programs’ demographics and their pre-departure curricula anti-racist and anti-colonialist education contents. We distributed it to 148 global health educators identified via email at various time intervals. Descriptive statistics were obtained for quantitative data and qualitative data analysis was conducted on free text comments.

Results: 44% of survey recipients responded. The most represented types of programs were pediatric residency GH tracks (37%) and emergency medicine (20%), family medicine (6%) and pediatric emergency medicine (9%) GH fellowships affiliated with academic institutions. 28% of programs do not have faculty who identify as underrepresented minorities or international medical graduates. 86% had a formal GH pre-departure curriculum, however the following areas were poorly covered (minimal to no coverage): anti-racism (51%), white saviourism (55%), history of global health (41%), history of colonialism (54%).

Conclusion: While the majority of GH programs recognize the need for formal pre-departure training, we identified significant areas of improvement in their GH curricula anti-racist and anti-colonialist contents. Addressing those topics is paramount to a more equitable future in GH.