Departmental Metrics to Guide Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for Academic Family Medicine Departments

• Published in: Family medicine 2024-06, Vol.56 (6), p.362-366
• Main Authors: Nair, Shalina, Rodríguez, José E, Elwood, Samantha, Wilson, Elisabeth, Ramanathan, Annamalai, Stulberg, Debra, Vail, Belinda, Rundell, Kristen, Peek, C J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cultural Diversity; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion; Family Practice - education; Humans; Original; Personnel Selection - methods
• ISSN: 0742-3225; 1938-3800; 1938-3800
• DOI: 10.22454/FamMed.2024.865619

Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) efforts have accelerated over the past several years, without a traditional guidebook that other missions often have. To evaluate progress over time, departments of family medicine are seeking ways to measure their current EDI state. Across the specialty, unity regarding which EDI metrics are meaningful is absent, and discordance even exists about what should be measured. This paper provides a general metrics framework, including a wide array of possibilities to consider measuring, for assessing individual departmental progress in this broad space. These measures are designed to be general enough to provide common language and can be customized to align with strategic priorities of individual family medicine departments. The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee of the Association of Departments of Family Medicine has produced a common framework to facilitate measurement of EDI outcomes in the following areas: care delivery and health, workforce recruitment and retention, learner recruitment and training, and research participation. This framework allows departments to monitor progress across these domains that impact the tripartite mission, providing opportunities to capitalize on measured gains in EDI. Departments can review this framework and consider which metrics are applicable or develop their own metrics to align with their strategic priorities. In the future, collective departments could compare notes and measure aggregate progress together. Evaluating progress is a step in the journey toward the goal of ensuring that departments are operating from inclusive and just academic systems.