Designing for Equity in Medical Education

Assessment systems are the combination of tests, evaluations, and feedback geared to provide accurate, useful information about how medical trainees are learning and progressing. Unfortunately, existing assessment systems are often inequitable, leading to biased evaluations and harmful impacts on trainees. Designing for Equity in Medical Education seeks to alleviate these disparities by creating practical, foundational knowledge about the pressing problem of assessment equity in medical education.

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Designing for Equity in Medical Education is producing two key deliverables:

• Prototypes of equitable assessment systems, tested at our five collaborating pediatric residency programs, which can be adapted, scaled, and implemented on a larger scale in pediatric graduate medical education, and
• An evidence-based guidebook that other medical education programs with varying contexts, resources, and expertise can use to develop more equitable assessment systems.

This design project is a rigorous cycle of systematically conducting analysis and exploration of educational needs, constructing solutions in the real-world context, and evaluating and reflecting on design work.

Housed within the Department of Pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, our project team spans five collaborating pediatric residency programs across the United States. Designing for Equity in Medical Education is currently funded by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation through a three-year Board Grant.