"See Me as Human:" Reflections on an Experiential Curriculum Led by People With Lived Experience of Incarceration.

Abstract

Improving physical and mental healthcare delivery to incarcerated patients and people with carceral histories provides an opportunity to improve health equity more broadly. This article provides a medical curriculum perspective led by the firsthand narratives of two women with lived expertise of incarceration in collaboration with interdisciplinary health professions students and faculty. Together we state that recognizing the humanity of individuals with carceral involvement precedes the ability to provide ethical or equitable healthcare: this humanity begins with students and the community sharing places and spaces together. We herein detail our experiences in honoring community educators with lived expertise of incarceration while pioneering a grant-funded, interdisciplinary medical education event offering early exposure to experiential learning in hopes of preparing future clinicians to transcend the status quo of substandard care through individual-level and systems-level advocacy. By sharing humanity and building relationships directly with community experts, we endeavor to offer future clinicians the relational framework to inform their advocacy efforts to improve healthcare systems from the bottom up throughout their clinical training and lifelong careers. Most importantly, we highlight the reasons why we believe medical curricula aiming to dismantle inequities facing people with carceral histories must be taught alongside those with lived expertise.