Annual BUMC Health Equity Symposium.

The Boston University Medical Campus Annual Health Equity Symposium seeks to engage students, residents/fellows, healthcare professionals and community members from all disciplines to focus on issues of health equity and promote collaboration on innovative strategies to combat these inequalities.

The keynote speaker at the inaugural symposium in 2017 was Professor Sir Michael Marmot MBBS, MPH, Ph.D., FRCP, FFPHM, FMedSci. Chair of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health, Director of the International Institute for Society and Health. MRC Research Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College, London. He has been at the forefront of research into health inequalities for the past 30 years, including as Principal Investigator of the Whitehall Studies of British civil servants and leads the English Longitudinal Study of Aging. He has authored multiple books including The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity, a look at the effects of class on our health.

About the Symposium

In “Crossing the Quality Chasm” the Institute of Medicine named equity as one of the six pillars of quality healthcare.  Locally and nationally competing institutions have established organization-wide initiatives to promote equity. Institutions such as UCLA, Harvard, and Penn have established annual symposiums around health equity as an opportunity to discuss pertinent issues in disparities in healthcare. Such events help centralize and highlight the campus-wide efforts aimed at addressing the social determinants of health and the commitment to a mission of equity.

Boston University School of Public Health and Boston Medical Center are national leaders in health equity work. Many departments hospital-wide and at the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Public Health have research, education and community initiatives to advance health equity. There are so many individuals and groups on campus dedicated to areas of care delivery, community programs and partnerships, research, and medical education. However, these efforts are often isolated and could benefit from wider collaboration between the different campuses, specialties and within the greater community. The objective of an annual symposium is to develop partnerships and build upon a multidisciplinary approach to solving issues of health inequity while demonstrating the institutional commitment to health equity.

Objective

The Boston University Medical Campus is a national leader in both the provision of high-quality healthcare to a diverse and underserved patient population and the education of future leaders in medicine and public health. The establishment of an annual Health Equity Symposium will support the mission, vision, and values of our campus and will emphasize the work being done to promote health equity.

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