Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice.

A commitment to DEIJ is a moral imperative and consistent with scientific best practices. Organizations promoting DEIJ produce more innovation and better outcomes in business and scientific research.1-5 For academic institutions, accelerating progress towards inclusive excellence requires a commitment to best practices in recruitment, hiring, retention, advancement, and promotion, as well as to fostering an organizational culture that ensures inclusion, defined as belonging (feeling part of a group) and uniqueness (feeling valued for one’s own identity),6-10 and thriving, defined as a sense of vitality and learning.11-13 The success of team science, an NIH priority for accelerating innovation in scientific discovery, requires full inclusion of individuals with diverse knowledge, expertise, and experience to maximize creativity and impact, to reduce bias in scientific findings, and to eliminate health inequities.14 Fostering a culture in the health sciences that allows all to thrive is also essential for building a scientific workforce of the size and talent necessary to maintain US competitiveness.

Boston University:  Office of the Senior Diversity Officer (OSDO) and Office of Diversity & Inclusion (ODI)

BU is an urban university founded on a core doctrine of inclusion. Since its founding in 1839, BU has admitted students of diverse races, sex, and religions. Specifically, BU was the:

  • First US university to admit women to a medical college (1873)
  • First US university to graduate a Native American MD, Charles Eastman (1890)
  • First US university to award a PhD to a woman, Helen Magill White (1877)
  • First US med school to graduate a Black woman, Rebecca Lee Crumpler (1874)
  • Graduated & employed on faculty the nation’s first Black psychiatrist, Solomon Carter Fuller (1897)
  • Home of first nationwide study of causes & prevention of illness in Black women in the US, the Black Women’s Healthy Study (1995)
  • First US med school to march under its own banner in a Pride Parade (2011)

In keeping with its deep roots in diversity, BU is committed to the ongoing work required to create an environment where everyone can participate and thrive. The culture at BU celebrates inclusive excellence, i.e., research environments that prioritize, cultivate, and benefit from the full breadth of diverse talents to optimize population health.5,15-18 The University-level efforts on diversity and inclusion are led by the BU Office of the Senior Diversity Officer (OSDO) and the BU Diversity and Inclusion Office.

The mission of the OSDO is to serve as an active, engaged liaison between the University’s leadership team and the broader BU community. The OSDO manages three committees: the Antiracism Working Group, which is responsible for examining policies and practices across the University and making recommendations to eliminate bias; the Community Safety Advisory Group, which seeks to enhance responsive and preventative efforts to improve community safety at BU; and the Taskforce on Workplace Culture, which is assessing the perceptions of staff with respect to how welcome they feel in the work environment and is making recommendations for improvements.

The mission of the BU Diversity and Inclusion Office is to coordinate, lead, and accelerate efforts to embody BU’s founding principles that higher education should be accessible to all, and research should be conducted in service of the wider community. Since its launch, the D&I Office has grown to include 7 full-time staff positions and established many initiatives, including: University Scholars and Target of Opportunity programs, which host diverse scholars and expand hiring URG faculty; Faculty & Staff Community Networks, which foster inclusion and dialogue in safe spaces and include a group focused on disability support; and the Inclusive Practitioners Cohort Program, which has helped dozens of BU leaders develop skills for promoting DEIJ in their units.

In 2020, BU reaffirmed its commitment to DEIJ by making Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion one of the five pillars of its 2030 Strategic Plan. Since that time, BU has made many important investments, including establishing the Center for Antiracist Research and the LGBTQIA+ center; expanding anti-bias training in faculty hiring; implementing a climate survey for staff; and creating a learning community for URG faculty.

Boston University Medical Campus: Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Access (DEIA)

The Medical Campus Associate Provost founded faculty development programming on the BU Medical Campus (BUMC) in 2011, emphasizing accelerating diversity and creating inclusive longitudinal programs that have grown to eight annual, year-long faculty programs, including programs for Early Career URG, URG Leaders, Women Leaders, Mid-Career Leaders, and Narrative Writing. BU was the first school in the nation to create a space where faculty could describe their commitments to DEIA in the publicly accessible Clinical & Translational Science Institute (CTSI) faculty networking platform, BU Profiles.

In 2021, the Boston Medical Center (BMC) amplified its commitment to healthcare transformation by launching the BMC Health Equity Accelerator to eliminate health inequities through data-driven insights and community-based research.19-21 BMC is BU’s teaching hospital; all faculty at BMC have primary academic appointments at BU. In 2021 the Lown Institute ranked BMC the #2 most racially inclusive hospital in the US, out of 3208 hospitals.22 BMC has an institution-wide Glossary of Cultural Transformation, which emphasizes inclusive language. BMC’s Review-Based Guidelines for Equitable Assignment of all Leadership Positions was a National Academy of Sciences invited poster.23

Boston University School of Public Health: Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Justice (DEIJ)

We, the Boston University School of Public Health community, believe that fostering diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility is essential to fulfilling our mission as an academic public health institution; a mission firmly rooted in social justice. Our commitment to these principles strengthens our voice as a community while elevating our ability to eliminate health disparities locally, nationally, and globally. We maintain and celebrate this commitment through excellence and innovation in research, education, and service.

DEIJ principles are fundamental to a rewarding educational experience; our community benefits from the School’s robust, complex mix of backgrounds and perspectives. Under the leadership of the Associate Dean for DEIJ, the SPH DEIJ Office supports and encourages a climate of inclusivity, sensitivity, and open dialogue against the backdrop of critical inquiry. Further, we celebrate and welcome our varied experiences, our multiple and intersectional identities, and diverse perspectives that reflect and promote our multicultural environment. The School’s commitment to diversity is demonstrated through our recruitment of a faculty, staff, and students, as well as student organizations, programming, research priorities, curricula, and community practice partnerships. Our commitment to inclusion is demonstrated through our creation of a fair, pluralistic, transparent school community that is welcoming to all who celebrate and participate in our shared ideals of public health through excellence and innovation in our research, education, and scholarship. We demonstrate our commitment to equity by ensuring that all community members—faculty, staff, students, alumni, and others—have access to the tools and support that they need to succeed. Justice is central to the mission of public health, and the School’s commitment to justice for all is reaffirmed in our own mission and values. It is our aspiration that our students graduate equipped with the openness and cross-cultural understanding essential to effectively practice public health in the twenty-first century.

Our research and service agendas are deeply enriched by discourse that engages our partner communities, both locally and globally. We believe that effective public health agendas incorporate the experiences and perspectives from the communities we serve alongside. It is our aspiration that our research agenda promote further inquiry and activism and that our community-based partnerships empower individuals, families, and communities.

BUSPH is committed to creating an environment in which all individuals are treated with respect and dignity. We embed the principles of DEIJ in our classrooms, research, hiring, retention, staff and faculty development, student engagement, mission, and values. Our updated 10-point plan provides a framework to organize the work being done at the School and to inform our work moving forward, recognizing that this work is ever-changing and never finished. Each of the ten pillars is listed below:

  1. Institutional Structure - Equitable systems that eliminate structural barriers
  2. Policies and Procedure - Structural and systemic practices that facilitate the success of BIPOC and historically marginalized groups
  3. Resource Allocation - Allocation of resources with an equity lens to fund diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice efforts appropriately and in a way that ensures that the overall spend is in alignment with the commitment
  4. Academic Equity and Student Success - Equitable systems that promote academic equity and student success for all students inside and outside the classroom
  5. Curriculum and Pedagogy - Curriculum and pedagogy that design the classroom experience for academic equity
  6. Hiring, Promotion, and Retention - Structures and policies that promote access and equity in the hiring and promotion process and create an environment that allows all to thrive
  7. Institutional Programming - Regular provision of knowledge and tools to enable the community to act in accordance with the values of the School, engage in healthy discussion, and create an inclusive environment
  8. Education, Training, and Employee Development - Trainings and professional development opportunities for students, faculty, and staff
  9. Campus Climate and Culture - An inclusive and welcoming community, illuminating and eradicating any inequitable conditions and promoting the wellbeing of all
  10. Admissions and Access - Strategies that expand access of underrepresented students to education at SPH and ensure equity in the admissions process

We recognize that advancing these goals requires a commitment to self-reflection with respect to our programs, research initiatives, curricula, student engagement activities, and all other programming to ensure a process of continual improvement that is ongoing.

SPH Community Resources

BUSPH aspires to create a culture of inclusion where all members of our community feel valued and respected. To that end our Public Health Conversations, including our annual SPH Reads program, engage speakers representing a range of perspectives and identities in informative and thought-provoking discussions.

In partnership with the University’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion, BUSPH provides all faculty and staff opportunities to learn new skills through reading groups, annual trainings, and workshops on campus, including on the topics of mitigating microaggressions, understanding diversity, equity, and inclusion, and developing inclusive faculty searches and addressing bias.

Student organizations at SPH are central to the aims of DEIJ and are run, organized, and facilitated by students. Groups have a variety of goals and focus on public health issues, common interests, identities, community organizing, intervention, or current curriculum issues.

The Activist Lab at SPH provides students and SPH community members with the opportunity to develop tools they can use to be effective change agents. The aim of the Activist Lab is to be a catalyst for bold public health practice that disrupts injustice with tenacity and compassion.

Please see the School’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice website for the latest DEIJ plan, events, and more: bu.edu/sph/diversity. You are welcome to contact sphdi@bu.edu for more information.

References

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