Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts are led by Dr. Erica Taylor, assistant professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Associate Chief Medical Officer. Our primary goals are to create a coordinated strategy across Duke Health to provide equitable care to patients and create an environment of inclusion and belonging for caregivers and trainees.
Click each of the below activities to view more details about our efforts.
DEI Activities
In an effort to create a more personalized and specific approach to healthcare, we created a new way of reviewing the experiences of different patient groups by including information like:
- Gender
- Geography
- Race
- Ethnicity
This information was collected and housed in a platform that individual users or leaders can regularly access to identify any differences in patient experience to determine better ways to treat and interact with patients from different demographic sub groups.
What has been done so far: Created a guide on the utility and application of this tool
Of additional significance, these efforts:
- Align with the DUHS implementation of DEI metrics for co-management agreements
In order to ensure that we recruit diverse medical talent, we worked to imbue the recruitment processes with tools to ensure the processes used by our search committees operate are underpinned with fair and just standards.
Examples of these tools include:
- Job Description Availability
- Compliance Considerations
- Behavior-Based Interview Questions
- Outreach mechanisms for diverse populations (internal and external)
What we've accomplished so far: the development of a translatable instructional session on applying equity to all provider search committees
Our DEI efforts have been represented at a number of cross-entity collaborations for DEI at Duke including the following:
- Racial Equity Advisory Council (Infrastructure & Policy) | Duke University
- APP Leadership Institute | Duke University School of Medicine
- Moments to Movement (M2M) | Duke Health
- Clinical Enterprise Strategic Plan | Duke Health
- Executive Leadership Team (Aligned Strategy Development) | Duke Health Integrated Practice
- Leadership Retreats | Duke University
Dr. Taylor serves as the physician representative on the leadership team for APPLI. Backed by Johnson & Johnson, the initiative allows APPs to form a team, design a project, and undergo a leadership program that empowers them to address health disparities. Here is a link to the program: https://sites.duke.edu/appli/
Dr. Taylor meets regularly with department chairs to discuss DEI efforts with the goal of synthesizing common themes and action items, shared learnings, and reducing duplication.
A critical tenet of achieving an inclusive healthcare environment is having a diverse workforce.
Over the last several months, we have worked with Medical Staff Recruitment (MSR) team to identify opportunities to educate search committees who recruit new providers on basic principles of conducting more equitable processes. These tactics range from casting a wider net—for example targeting underrepresented in medicine (URiM) minorities and gender diversity, to standardizing the questions asked of each applicant and making job descriptions more explicit and accessible to committee members.
The physician practice is at an all-time high with the number of physician and advanced practice provider (APP) searches.
In partnership with Medical Staff Recruitment team and invested provider stakeholders, we are educating physician leaders who lead and/or serve on search committees as the designated "DEI search advisors,” to prepare them for the intricacies of conducting equitable and inclusive searches. Our goal is to build a team that is skilled in and committed to search equity, representing Duke Health values.
Our DEI lead helped to launch a new endeavor focused on the development of our staff members. When we look at the composition of staff across various levels, we are often struck by the "sticky floor" that many experience in complex healthcare organizations. This program provides a template to address this phenomenon and give talented individuals an opportunity to grow while working at Duke Health. Started as a pilot program, this program continues to thrive an maintains strong clinical leadership support.
In 2021, formerly the DHIP piloted the distribution of inclusive skin tone bandages throughout its clinics. These inclusive items continue to be available in many locations today.
Studies have shown a national trend of data which correlates race and negative descriptors used by providers in patient documentation, which suggesting racial bias. Because of these findings, we turned our attention to opportunities to ensure our providers were made aware of these trends and to be mindful of them in their own patient interactions.
Learn more by reading the following article:
The former DHIP launched a Women's Network in March 2022 to provide a forum for women's issues in the workplace and to facilitate networking and support systems for the women within our organization. The group hosted a panel of female leaders representing a range of professions within healthcare, who spoke on challenges and victories within the workforce, and provided a forum for questions and networking.
DEI Timeline Overview
