Institutional problems like racism in medicine demand swift and decisive institutional efforts aimed at making our educational and patient care systems work for everyone, not just the privileged few. To find out about our medical school's new and ongoing antiracism efforts, we talked with Dr. Tracy Downs, Urologist and UWSMPH Associate Dean for Diversity and Multicultural Affairs. 

"I can't breathe:" a phrase every healthcare worker knows as a call to action. In the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and Ahmaud Arbery, part of that call to action for medical professionals and students includes acknowledging racism and inequity within our own profession's past and present. For our first episode on Racism in Medicine, Ashley Scott, MD/PhD student at UWSMPH and Student National Medical Association representative, shares her experience as a Black woman in academic medicine and her thoughts on how to redefine who shapes and benefits from our medical systems. 

In March 2020, medical schools around the country suspended all in-person teaching and clinical rotations due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Glued to the news and Covid-19 case tracking maps, we spent the first few months of the pandemic watching this crisis evolve from within our homes and communities rather than within our hospital and clinics. That perspective enabled one UWSMPH student, Angela Olvera, to identify and address gaps within our country's pandemic response—gaps that disproportionately affect some more than others. In this episode, Angela discusses medical student social responsibility and her work combating heath inequities exacerbated and 'unmasked' by Covid-19. 

Fever, cough, shortness of breath: we know the devastating impact of Covid-19 on our patients’ health. More difficult to quantify, however, are the multitude of ways the Covid-19 pandemic has changed peoples' lives beyond our hospital and clinic walls. In this episode, Dr. Christine Seibert, an Internist and Dean of Medical Student Education and Services and UWSMPH, shares the challenges of working as a physician in the time of Covid-19 in her piece, “Ode to My Ladies.”