Through the next phase of Differences Matter, the School of Medicine will transform existing structures to sustain the successes the initiative and will implement new areas of focus designed to target high impact areas that have the potential to accelerate the achievement of equity and inclusion across the medical profession. These include:

  1. Diversify the Academy of Medicine by expanding the URM faculty and leadership workforce to transform UCSF and the nation’s medical schools to better solve the complex problems that continue to face our increasingly diverse communities.
  2. Generate, Disseminate and Apply New Knowledge by critically analyzing and exploring the role of race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation and oppression related to membership in diverse groups in medicine, science and health; in particular in emerging fields of population health and precision medicine.
  3. Build Anti-racism/Anti-oppression Expertise within UCSF by establishing competencies by role and devising educational strategies for individuals to develop these competencies, using both internal and curated external resources.
  4. Optimize the Culture of Equity and Inclusion at UCSF by imbedding anti-racist and anti-oppressive principles in all systems and structures of the School and providing central resources to support the work of control points so that all have the opportunity to thrive and contribute.

This work will also build on the success of the Watson Scholars; the Chairs and Directors Council on Diversity; School of Medicine Dean’s Office diversity accountability strategies; and the Office of Diversity and Outreach advocacy, staff educational programs, and staff hiring redesign work. 

The key to this work will be close collaboration with Campus experts and Health Systems experts on educational and support strategies that optimize our patient care, research and educational environments; a focus on developing enduring resources that enable control point leaders to assume responsibility for successfully supporting anti-racism strategies in their units; and systems improvement strategies to review and revise administrative and academic systems to address unconscious bias. Throughout all this work, we will employ the strategies that UCSF is known for: assembling collaborative, multidisciplinary teams; partnering across different institutional units and outside the institution; finding and applying best evidence; exploring controversies and questions that arise; and disseminating results as broadly as possible.

The work of each focus area will be co-led by a team of staff and faculty.