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Research Article | DOI: https://doi.org/10.31579/2637-8892/150
Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Director of Faculty Development, College of Pharmacy, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA.
*Corresponding Author: Maria V. Tejada-Simón, PhD, MEd, Associate Professor of Pharmacology, Director of Faculty Development, College of Pharmacy, University of Houston, 4349 Martin Luther King Boulevard, Houston, Texas 77204-5037, USA. Ph: 713-743-7835. Email: mvtejada@central
Citation: Maria V. Tejada-Simón (2022) Changing Minds and Behaviors on Race in a College of Pharmacy: A History Walk. J. Psychology and Mental Health Care, 6(2): DOI: 10.31579/2637-8892/150
Copyright: © 2022, Maria V. Tejada-Simón, This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Received: 06 November 2021 | Accepted: 07 December 2021 | Published: 04 January 2022
Keywords: race; training; pharmacy; education; culture
In the wake of the racial injustice events and protests during summer 2020, the faculty and staff at the University of Houston-College of Pharmacy (UH-COP) felt a sense of helplessness and alarm. UH is generally proactive circulating and creating statements to show support for anti-racist education, changes in social justice, diversity, equity and inclusion. However, this time it was not enough. We wanted to have the courage to take a collective stand against racial prejudice, have the bravery not to remain silent.
Confronted with the question on why we have not solved this long history of racial tear in our country, we recognized we do not understand how we got to this situation in the first place. Our country’s present situation suffers from a lack of attention to the root causes. Thus, a better understanding of those root causes would help us discover how to move past where we are right now, provide us with the tools to advance and to have open conversations about race and social injustices.
With that effort in mind, the Office for Faculty Development at UH-COP designed and implemented a challenging program for faculty and staff over a 9-week period during the summer of 2020. The program combined open free sources as well as loaned films, together with facilitated sessions by Pharmacy experts. Because it was important to participate in this significant moment, the program started less than three weeks after the death of George Floyd, while the protests and civil unrest, as well as the pandemic, were still present in the USA and around the world.
Herein, we outline the approach taken to changing minds and behaviors in our academic unit, building understanding to racial disparities, diversity, equity and inclusion. As part of the program, we facilitated particularly emotional exchanges among faculty and staff, collecting both personal and professional experiences that shaped us around biases and racism. Additionally, feedback from participants regarding the effectiveness of the program was gathered. After this educational experience, it is our commitment to continue bringing awareness to this topic through inclusion of additional relevant topics and work with our students as elements of change.
The Covid-19 pandemic has altered our personal and professional life as well as our society. Regrettably, many lives have been lost, and everyone knows somebody that passed away victim to the virus. In addition, we abruptly had to change our practices to continue being effective. In Higher Education, we had to move to online instruction and clinical practices, using new technology to continue training our scholars. A few months into this scenario, many inequities were uncovered, with certain minorities presenting cultural and socio-economic problems that Institutions did not anticipate. We realized that this global pandemic affects disproportionally our most vulnerable populations in the United States and around the world.
While looking through that difficult lens, regrettably, we further witnessed an outpouring of systemic racism in its many forms, with the killing of blacks, increasing police brutality and confusing politics before, during and after 2020. Though institutions placed statements on websites supporting diversity, equity and inclusion, the breadth of racial disparities in our daily life, the educational and health system, as well as our society struck us hard, yet again.
Racism is silently rooted in political and economic organizations within our social world. Examples in history showing how a past of repression, abandonment and violence (such as discrimination in housing, wealth, employment, and social services), intersect with politics, policies, law enforcement, and public health, are not familiar, even though they are intimately linked and demonstrated in the present society. Many voices of the past have stated their views on racism worth noting. Systemic racism refers to the structures, organizations, beliefs, and practices acting together in a way that generate and maintain inequities among racial and ethnic groups (Powell, 2008). These systemic/structural instruments do not need the actions of people to survive (Bonilla-Silva 1997), as they are constantly altering the conditions necessary to ensure their dissemination (Link and Phelan, 1995). That means that even if individual discrimination were entirely eradicated, racial inequities would undoubtedly remain unchanged due to the persistence of structural racism (Jones 2000).
The College of Pharmacy at the University of Houston was not an exception to this unfamiliar history. Thus, as part of the mission of the office for Faculty Development we decided that the best course of action during these tumultuous times was to embark on a review of our history, and educate our faculty and staff on the roots of the systemic racism that we suffer today. Hence, we designed and implemented a challenging program over a 9-week period. The program combined both, open free internet and paid resources, and finalized with a facilitated session in which faculty and staff talked about institutional racism, and exchanged personal and professional experiences around bias and bigotry. Additionally, a poll provided feedback from participants regarding the effectiveness of the program.
We believe that this program helped us reach an understanding regarding the status of systemic racism in our society and community today. We were able to learn and confront our painful history, which will help us develop effective anti-racist personal reactions to entrenched inequalities. As health professionals, administrators and academics, this knowledge is important to confront also the disparities exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic and others perhaps to come. After this educational experience, it is our continued commitment to keep up the awareness through inclusion of additional relevant topics and work with our students as elements of change.
While 2020 has not been easy in many other fronts, the national climate regarding racism, (suffered by people of color in their everyday life) loudly exploded once again after more than 400 years of slavery, genocide, oppression and neglect, with the murder of George Floyd in May 25, 2020 at the hands of the police. Because it was important for us to participate in this significant moment, the office of Faculty development started researching for program options while the protests and civil unrest were still present in the USA and around the world.
Our group of faculty (n=82) and staff (n=54) at the College of Pharmacy-UH included a diversity of race, rank, age, and sex (Figure 1 and 2).
The group of participants (averaging ~35-40% of faculty and staff, depending on the session) was composed of individuals with either prior training in diversity and health education (67%) or no prior training at all (33%), as depicted in Figure 4. Because we included all faculty and staff, the group was both intra-professional and interdisciplinary (faculty, basic scientists, clinical faculty, administrators and other staff), providing a broader lens on our collective view of diversity. The institutional review board (IRB) at the University of Houston determined that this study was exempt from review.
To develop the program, the first impulse was to offer a workshop where we could have a conversation. However, there were two disadvantages to that selection: 1) the emotional labor for our people of color, which have been fighting racism for a long time, and they appear exhausted; 2) the disinformation and confusion over systemic racism, what is it, and its place in our modern society. Thus, our call to action prioritized education on the history of racial discrimination and disparities, followed by reflection and exchange. Our race and cultural diversity program pursued several objectives:
The idea was to develop a program that will enable participants to confront issues of discrimination and xenophobia effectively and from the roots. By the end of the program, our vision was to change minds, grow a community of support, with a better sense of understanding that could translate in better practices for themselves, their departments and their communities. With this in mind, we created a nine-week virtual learning experience, in which participants met once a week to engage with practical tools and resources focusing on the science of race, the history of racism and learn about cultural diversity. The program structure included weekly live synchronous lectures, with embedded videos, documentaries, talks and movies, providing participants information, science and specially history that will give them the opportunity to reflect, make connections and participate in discussions. All materials from this program offered captioning services to accommodate all participants.
All resources used in this program were obtained from legitimate free internet or subscription-based materials, unshared and used exclusively for educational purposes as described below:
The program was delivered sequentially and as indicated in Figure 3. The resources used every week are described in Section 2.3. The director of Faculty development diversified and complemented materials from different sources, which were relevant in content, offering lectures, videos and articles together for every weekly session.
The first eight weeks were designed as scaffold educational modules on the science of race, history of social inequality, privilege and power. During the ninth week, reflection and exchange was encouraged by
randomly assigning participants to four different groups. The groups discussed various prompts, such as:
This exchange was followed by a facilitated conversation about structural racism and the effects in Pharmacy education and the health system.
By implementing the program, we sought to educate better our academic unit in matters of race and cultural diversity. Additionally, we wanted to understand the experiences of discrimination that we are still suffering today trying to appreciate the interwoven mechanisms of social inequality, privilege and power. Participants learned how system of structures that had procedures rooted in law, and that handicapped African Americans and other minorities, even after being banned, have a strong impact in our lives today. Participants also learned how institutional racism has been obstructing people of color from gaining access to goods, services and opportunities to move ahead. This comprehensive educational program on racism taught us to account for key ways in which historical factors influence our present outcomes. Just to name a few:
Participants Reflections
The educational portion of the race and cultural diversity program for Pharmacy faculty and staff was extremely important and eye opening. To revisit the history of racism in the U.S.A so that there is a clear understanding of how the past still affects the present proved essential to engage all participants in reflection. The second portion on reflection and exchange was very honest, active, cooperative and engaging, working with colleagues and learning from each other so that we have the courage to speak about this difficult topic in a more personal manner.
Below is a summary of participant’s reflections, collected anonymously through the group engagement using Google Jamboard:
What have you learned during the past eight weeks?
Talk about things that provoked a strong reaction in you
Share your personal or observed experiences on biases and racism
How can we be ‘interrupters’ of racism?
What is the level of optimism for change this time around?
After the program was delivered, a survey was sent to all participants to evaluate the series on Race and Cultural diversity anonymously. The survey was based on the Kirkpatrick model (Kirkpatrick,
1993), the most popular and widely used training evaluation model.
Questions in the survey targeted the four levels of the model:
A summary of the participant’s evaluation is presented in Figure 4.
Briefly, participants had a beginner (41%) or intermediate (52%) knowledge in matters or diversity, equity and inclusion, with no (33%) or some (67%) prior training. Some participants came to the program with personal expectations (44%), and for the most part the modules meet those expectations (67%). A great majority (91%) found the content presented very relevant to the recent racial chaos and very/extremely useful for learning (69%). The delivery format was deemed to be appropriate and clearly presented (90%). Pre- and post-session materials were included in the form of news articles, publications and/or online resources, which were beneficial to 62-57% of participants respectively. This indicates that participants relied mostly on the synchronous sessions with peer.
Most of the participants committed to attend other sessions following this program (95%). To follow up on this commitment, we tallied attendance to several other relevant sessions that followed the race and cultural diversity program during Fall 2020. Those sessions were (1) Checking in: initiating difficult dialogues to address underrepresented ethnic minorities (UREM) pharmacy student needs; (2) Inclusive teaching practices to build a learning community and a sense of belonging; and (3) Building on resilience: black male achievement in the postsecondary context. Attendance to those sessions was 56%, 78% and 33% respectively. Finally, and despite the program, 14% of participants still felt slightly uncomfortable talking about diversity, equity and inclusion topics.
Additionally, all participant’s feedback derived from the survey is also shown:
Reactions regarding the program:
How the program could be improved:
Future plans for engagement:
Overall comments about the program:
We acknowledge that this study has limitations. Participants were only composed of a small sample size from a single College, not representing the entire Institution. It would be interesting to try this program in other Colleges, especially in the humanities area, and including a more diverse sample. Additionally, a bigger sample size would allow performing comparative studies by age, ethnicity, and gender.
The goal of the program described herein was to encourage learning on how individual and structural racism, society and policies contributed to our present racial turmoil. Understanding first the many faces of social segregation, immigration policies as well as intergenerational effects provides an understanding to the multiple dimensions of structural racism (Chandra et al., 2011).
The implementation of the program had several aims, such as presenting evidence, demonstrate influence, call to action and encourage discussion. This was a community engagement at the College level, in which participants not only acquired knowledge, but contributed with ideas and feedback, expressing a commitment for continuation as well as perhaps proper implementation into the College’ strategic plan. We believe that this could represent an initial metrics towards implementing initiatives concerning inclusion, equity, climate indicators, diversity education and training in the near future.
It is our hope that with this program we have formed a community of support, and had a greater sense of empathy towards matters of race and diversity. The majority of us understood and reflected on the concept of bias and felt confident to manage our individual biases; we committed to create an inclusive environment, and shared or recommended this very same program to our families, friends and colleagues (personal communications, not shared in data presentation).
How can we translate and apply our knowledge to our Institution? Decades ago, higher education committed to foster cultural diversity, increase faculty and staff representation as well as learner diversity by stablishing specific programs, especially in the health professions (Yanchick et al., 2014; Chisholm 2004; Chisholm-Burns 2008; Hayes 2008). While the University of Houston has gained momentum in this area, achieving this goal is not an easy task, and many institutions have not followed up with the effort. We are certain that it will remain difficult to progress without support. We need to back up faculty and staff of color when assigning them to more committees, but penalizing them for a reduced productivity. Moreover, when assigning them to mentoring and educational programs for minority students, without acknowledging these efforts in annual reviews and promotion process; or evading offering internal diversity grants, to rely solely on extramural funding. All this creates a culture of exclusion, which we must be devoted to change in higher education.
It is our hope that programs like this one help explain race-associated differences in this country. By acknowledging the etiologic clues embedded in policies, laws, culture, and science, we can start dismantling the perpetuated ideas of differences among the races and ethnicities. We trust these series have prepared us to fight racism at three different levels (Jones, 2000):
We believe the program to be effective and of worth when participants invited family members, neighbors, colleagues and their communities, to engage with the material available, raising questions and having discussions beyond the walls or our College and Institution. The readers are invited to inquire further, if they feel this program could, in any way, be useful for their setting.
The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.
The author would like to thank Dr. Louis Williams for his constant encouragement during the creation and implementation of the program as well as for his critical review on this manuscript.
This article was funded by a publication grant from the Underrepresented Women of Color Coalition (UR-WoCC) at the University of Houston.
The author declares no conflict of interest.