Antiracist Curriculum Implementation for Pediatric Residents

Abstract

Objectives Racism has been recognized as a public health crisis, with calls for greater focus on antiracism in medical training. We sought to evaluate a longitudinal antiracist curriculum among pediatric residents. Methods In 2020−2021, we delivered seven educational sessions to pediatric trainees in a single residency program. We administered pre-/post-surveys to assess changes in awareness of structural racism, knowledge of health inequities, antiracist clinical skills, and individual/institutional advocacy behaviors. Awareness was measured with 27 Likert-type items spanning five conceptual domains (schools, healthcare, justice system, employment, and housing/transportation). We evaluated knowledge with 18 true/false or multiple-choice questions. Participants indicated comfort with clinical skills using 13 Likert-type items drawn from national toolkits and policy statements. Individual/institutional advocacy behaviors were measured with 14 items from the Antiracism Behavioral Inventory. McNemar or paired Wilcoxon signed-rank tests compared measures before and after implementation. Results Out of 121 residents, 79 (65%) completed pre-surveys, 47 (39%) completed post-surveys, and 37 (31%) were eligible for matching across responses. 78% of respondents were female and 68% identified as White. We found significant increases in awareness across several conceptual domains (schools: p = 0.03; healthcare: p = 0.004; employment: p = 0.003; housing/transportation: p = 0.02). Mean knowledge score increased after implementation ( p = 0.03). Self-reported clinical skills improved significantly ( p < 0.001). Individual advocacy behaviors increased ( p < 0.001); there were no changes in institutional advocacy. Conclusion We demonstrate improvements in several educational constructs with a novel antiracist curriculum. Efforts to scale and sustain this work are ongoing, and additional teaching and evaluation methodologies may be incorporated in the future.