Rejecting a Narrative of Individual Deficit: A Model for Developing Antiracist Curriculum in the Health Sciences

Abstract

Recent attention to issues of systemic and institutional racism have resulted in renewed calls for antiracist teaching and learning in the health sciences. Concurrently, there is an emerging socio-political mobilization to pass legislation that limits the teaching of systemic racism. We argue that teaching and learning about racism in academic health professional curricula often has serious limitations—stagnating in a place of teaching about the social and structural determinants of health, yet emphasizing health education and individual behavioral interventions as solutions to health inequities. We present a framework that explains essential components of antiracist knowledge and action that we argue must be implemented across health sciences curricula. Using this framework, we call on health sciences educators to examine how learners engage with racism as a determinant of health and to make curricular changes that provide opportunities to learn about and engage with antiracist actions.