Adopting an Anti-Racism Public Health Curriculum Competency: The University of Washington Experience
2018
This case study walks through the steps taken at the University of Washington School of Public Health (UWSPH) "to develop a curriculum competency that would require all UWSPH students to acknowledge racism and its effects, to counter the tendency to minimize racism as a topic, and to compel the school to develop resources to support this education." Motivated in part by the Black Lives Matter movement as well as construction of a controversial $210 million county youth detention center, students at UWSPH began encouraging the school to address the institution's own racism.
To develop an anti-racist public health education (rather than the gentler "multicultural education"), advocates focused on incorporating racism as a schoolwide competency for all UWSPH graduates. The case study outlines the different perspectives at play on the school's curriculum committee as they considered the change, and the factors finally enabling the addition of this competency. The authors share lessons learned from the UWSPH experience thus far—including approaches for navigating faculty and student concerns and leveraging existing school resources—which other schools and programs of public health can reference for their own efforts.
Adopting an Anti-Racism Public Health Curriculum Competency: The University of Washington Experience
Source:
Adopting an Anti-Racism Public Health Curriculum Competency: The University of Washington Experience. Public Health Reports 2018; 133(4): 507-513. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0033354918774791.