Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

HIGH SCHOOL MENTORSHIP

A class from Westinghouse High School from the west side of Chicago visiting Cook County Hospital for a hands-on career day experience.

I AM ABEL

Students from I Am Abel, a local nonprofit dedicated to promoting career in medicine, participant in a simulation session.

HIGH SCHOOL MENTORSHIP

Led by Drs. John Tucker and Larissa Unruh, CCH EM Residents teach students from Chicago Hope Academy activities like Stop the Bleed training.

WINTER RETREAT

The PGY-3 class visiting the MAAFA Redemption Project as part of their winter retreat.

COOK COUNTY EM FIREARM VIOLENCE SYMPOSIUM

Dr. Megan Ranney, Chief Research Office for the American Foundation for Firearm Injury Reduction in Medicine (AFFIRM), participates in a Cook County Emergency Medicine symposium discussing the role of healthcare in addressing the gun violence epidemic.

SNMA REGION II CONFERENCE

WOMEN IN EM: ANNUAL RETREAT

ADVOCACY

Residents Jennifer Lee, Adrian Robles, and Anthony Alexander led a supply drive for Brave Space Alliance, a local community organization devoted to providing resources for BIPOC trans and gender-nonconforming individuals.

WINTER RETREAT

The PGY-2 class visiting Project Fire as part of their winter retreat

Mission Statement

The mission of the Cook County Emergency Medicine Diversity and Inclusion Committee is to not only recruit a diverse body of residents representative of our patient population, but also provide a safe and supportive climate for residents and faculty from historically excluded backgrounds.

As physicians at the safety net hospital of Chicago and the surrounding county, the Cook County Emergency Department sits at a very unique medical, socioeconomic, and cultural crossroads. Our Social Emergency arm works to educate our trainees on the many social determinants that affect our patient population in an effort to improve patient care.

Diversity in numbers

CCH DEMOGPRAHICS

*URiM denotes historically excluded racial and ethnic minorities

Patient Race

Patient Ethnicity

Residency Didactics

The DEI Committee works to deliver educational material related to implicit bias, LGBTQ+ healthcare disparities, housing inequality, and structural racism. Lectures presented by departmental, regional, and national leaders continue to be integrated into formal didactic resident and faculty education.

Inspiring Careers in medicine

In conjunction with community organizations, Cook County EM faculty and residents volunteer to give local youth exposure to careers in medicine. Activities include suture labs, splinting, and other hands on activities in our simulation lab and in community locations. Members of the DEI Committee also attend conferences such as LMSA, SNMA (RMEC and AMEC) in order to develop ongoing relationships with medical students from historically excluded and minoritized groups.

Departmental Collaboration

Members of the DEI committee work within the residency recruitment team to promote holistic review of applicants and to ensure the interviewee pool contains adequate representation of groups underrepresented in emergency medicine. Members of the DEI Committee are also involved in the selection process of the Cook County EM Diversity Externship Scholarship. More info on the scholarship can be found here.

Monthly Socials

All rotating M4’s entering a career in emergency medicine who identify as an underrepresented minority in medicine (racial, ethnic, sexual or gender minority) are invited to a monthly social sponsored by our department. We also hold a similar event for our rotating women pursuing a career in emergency medicine.

Community Engagement

Cook County Hospital primarily serves the communities of the west and south sides of Chicago, which have an average life expectancy 16 years lower than Chicago’s South Loop (just 7 miles north/east), largely due to social determinants of health. Factors such as racism, housing inequality, community violence, nutrition and food insecurity, environmental health, access to medical care, and cultural differences all contribute to our patients’ well being.

To fully understand a community’s social determinants of health, learning must expand beyond the clinical setting. As a result, residents participate in out-of-hospital experiences with programs such as the I Am Abel Foundation and Westinghouse College Prep. Within the department, Cook County EM residents and faculty have recently participated in the VotER initiative, research into vaccine hesitancy, and initiatives to improve access to the COVID-19 vaccines for our most vulnerable emergency department patients.