Antiracism in medical education: Readings and resources

Below are resources for educators and learners who want to read more or assess their own educational materials.

Resources for medical educators

National Consortium for Indigenous Medical Education (NCIME) Catalogue (2024): Resources developed by the NCIME to ensure medical education environments welcome and support Indigenous learners and faculty, and that institutions provide effective education in Indigenous health, including safe, trauma-informed care.

Indigenous health in specialty postgraduate medical education guide (2021, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada): This guide responds directly to faculties of medicine looking to enhance Indigenous health curricula and programming.

CanMEDS-Family Medicine Indigenous Health Supplement (2020 and 2023, College of Family Physicians of Canada): The Indigenous supplement to the CanMEDS-FM 2017 competency framework is a resource for undergraduate, postgraduate, and continuing medical education with potential to assist with program design, curriculum content, learning methods, and learner assessment. See also, CanMEDS–Family Medicine: Indigenous Health Case Study Compendium

A Framework for Integrating Structural Competency into Physician Leadership Curricula (CAMH, 2024): Describes how to integrate structural competency into physician leadership curricula so that educators can help learners challenge inequities in medicine. 

Checklists and toolkits for antiracism in medical education

Health Equity and Inclusive Framework for Education and Training (2021, CAMH): A framework to integrate equity and inclusion into the process of designing, developing and/or delivering training, courses and curriculum for health professionals.

Anti-racism in medicine collection (2020, Association of American Medical Colleges): Practice-based, peer-reviewed resources to teach antiracist knowledge and clinical skills, improve curricula, and foster collaboration to eliminate racism within medical education.

Toolkit for teaching about racism in the context of persistent health and healthcare disparities (2017, Society of Teachers of Family Medicine): Provides examples of resources and activities used to teach about race and racism, bias, identity, intersectionality, and privilege.

The Upstate Bias Checklist: A Checklist for Assessing Bias in Health Professions Education Content (2017 and 2017, Dr. Amy Caruso Brown): Free, publicly available tool for use when developing or reviewing content for learners at any level in the health professions. See also, Inclusive and bias-free curriculum checklist, adapted by Northwestern Medicine.

De-Biasing Medical Education: A Checklist Methodology (2019: Northwestern University, National Collaborative for Education to Address the Social Determinants of Health): One-hour webinar by Dr. Amy Caruso Brown, pediatric hematologist/oncologist, bioethicist and medical education at SUNY Upstate Medical University. Dr. Caruso Brown discusses how medical education content suffers from implicit, and sometimes explicit, bias with regard to race, ethnicity, gender and other characteristics. 

Reports and peer-reviewed literature

Black at Temerity Medicine; Addressing Anti-Black Racism (2022, University of Toronto): This "accountability report" from the University of Toronto's medical school looks at current and future actions to dismantle anti-Black racism, with a particular focus on the MD program and post-graduate medical education.

A framework for developing antiracist medical educators and practitioner-scholars (2022, Academic Medicine): The authors propose a framework for faculty development in antiracism education, and describe key elements to building faculty capacity to provide antiracism education to medical students and residents.

Educational resources for learners

Indigenous child and youth health in Canada: A curriculum for paediatric residents (2020, CPS/NCCIH): Developed by the Canadian Paediatric Society and the National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health, this 4-part training program on Indigenous child and youth health includes a module on providing culturally safe care.

Black Health Primer (2024, Black Health Education Collaborative): An online, accredited, self-learning course developed in Canada by the Black Health Education Collaborative created in response to gaps in education and training on Black health and anti-Black racism in medicine and public health in Canada.

Indigenous Health Primer (2019, Indigenous Health Writing Group of the Royal College): An accredited learning tool for physicians who want to learn essential knowledge about Indigenous health, including case studies of Indigenous experiences and insights from Indigenous Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.