Surprised by Co-Creation; Building Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in the Physiology curriculum with Undergraduate Students.

Abstract

As public-facing global institutions, modern universities are subject to equality legislation (locally the United Kingdom Equality Act) ¹ and the need to represent an increasingly diverse student body. For effective education, this broad cohort needs to see itself represented, both in the curriculum, and in the very structures of the university². It is with this in mind that staff in the Centre for Biomedical Sciences Education in Queen's University Belfast recruited three students from diverse backgrounds to co-design aspects of the Undergraduate Physiology Curriculum for Medicine and Health and Life Sciences (MHLS) degrees. As part of a 6-week summer internship, our students set out to identify gaps in the physiology curriculum regarding those with protected characteristics as described by the UK Equality Act 2010 (race, sex, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion and belief, disability and sexual orientation; Figure 1 ¹). Our aim was to incorporate Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) principles to create a learning environment that celebrates people's differences and represents individual students. Themes that developed over the six week period of the internship were recognizing oneself in the curriculum, cultural humility and intersectionality.