The IU School of Medicine Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Coalition, a student organization, began their annual fundraiser this month. In the face of anti-DEI initiatives, the organization seeks to continue promoting cultural and diversity programming and needs the funds to do so.
The organization is dedicated to acknowledging the importance of having diversity in the healthcare system, teaching medical students how to provide good healthcare to anyone seeking it, regardless of their background.
The steps challenge, a competition between participants that has them track their daily steps, in particular is promoting friendly competition and exercise. Through events like this, the coalition seeks to encourage, enable and empower the IUSM community.
Nicole Libiran, vice president of social media and communications, said that they don’t get much funding from the school and expects that funding could go down amid recent legislation. Fundraisers are a way to aid in buying supplies, food and other things for events they host.
Their fundraiser is fully sponsored by MedMatch Realty, a realty agency that helps physicians and health professionals find homes and transition to new areas. By tracking their steps throughout the month with the StepUp app, MedMatch will provide gift card prizes of the winners’ choice to the three participants with the most steps.
The coalition has raised $144 as time of publication, with each participant paying $8 to join the challenge. This money will go towards programming and support their goal of continuing to diversify their curriculum and improve recruitment and retention of students underrepresented in medicine.
“I found it hard to relate to some of my peers growing up, being from a predominantly white community,” Libiran said. “That’s why I joined the DEI Coalition, to uplift minority voices and it’s important that we have a diverse group of individuals in healthcare.”
According to Penn Medicine, the University of Penn State’s health system, patients who shared the same racial or ethnic background as their physicians were more likely to be given the maximum patient rating score. They had a sample 117,589 patients from 2014 to 2017, surveying them on their experience with the care they had.
The coalition also works to educate all healthcare professionals about how they can recognize their own implicit biases and try to provide the best care to a diverse group of patients.
However, the coalition has seen recent legislation that targets programs like this.
On Jan. 15, Indiana Governor Mike Braun signed an executive order dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion in all state agencies.
President Donald Trump also issued an executive order on Jan. 21 aiming to end DEI initiatives, calling them “illegal discrimination.”
Libiran said back in January, around 60 medical students came together to discuss “anti-DEI legislation.” The meeting discussed the best way that students can get involved and have their voices heard among recent federal and state orders.
Since then, the state has been working to pass Senate Bill 289. Under this bill, state educational institutions may not “manipulate or otherwise influence the composition of employees with preference to race, sex, color or ethnicity.”
Libiran and a group of her peers, are working on publishing their own interpretations of SB 289 that will include discussion about their feelings and understandings about the changes that are occurring with this legislation.
“We were told that, since we are a group organization, there wouldn’t be need to change our official name or anything like that,” Libiran said. “We were warned that there may need to be changes to websites in terms of titles and names, but we haven’t really gotten to that yet.”
However, IU has begun making changes to their own websites regarding DEI language.
“We are doing our best to support diverse groups while adhering to the laws, but we’re trying to have as much transparency as possible,” Libiran said.
In the future, the IUSM DEI Coalition plans to host more events in support of various cultural groups on all IU campuses. Students and community members can still join the steps challenge at any time until April 30, when the challenge ends.
