Our vision is to equip future healthcare professionals with the training necessary to care for LGBTQI+ patients under an informed and welcoming approach. We aim to improve both the health of LGBTQI+ patients and the education surrounding these topics. Our program will encourage leadership in advocating for communities that are historically underserved in medicine.
Participants will engage in discussions and in-depth learning about the unique healthcare needs, health inequities, and obstacles that affect the LGBTQI+ population to better understand and serve the marginalized populations they will surely care for as a healthcare professional.
Why Choose the Program?
The certificate program is designed to fill in knowledge gaps in the preclinical curriculum about the healthcare needs of LGBTQI+ populations and equip students with a more holistic understanding as to why these health disparities exist in the LGBTQI+ population. This will allow students to think critically when being presented with diseases and their associations to certain minority groups. Rather than solely ascribing pathology to a certain population, students will understand why these disparities and related associations have manifested which will hopefully help eliminate any biases they have in their clinical practice. They will also be able to approach healthcare concerns that LGBTQI+ patients may have from a more educated standpoint. In turn, this will help the institution create more well-rounded physicians and also increase the visibility of the LGBTQI+ population within our school, leading to a more welcoming environment for those individuals and marking WFSOM as a leader in advancing LGBTQI+ healthcare.
Outcomes
We hope to encourage students to become more active in eliminating health disparities in their everyday roles. We want this certificate to show others that these students have made an effort and contribution to becoming better healthcare professionals by expanding their knowledge to include the needs of different marginalized populations. This program is by no means meant to replace any actual training or experience in healthcare, but it will provide a basic and thorough foundation for anyone interested in working with population health disparities and/or LGBTQI+ populations.
Curriculum Overview
Teaching modality: lecture-based, online until further notice Assessment for successful completion: documented completion of all the required lectures + a capstone project.
Application Process
We will send out an email detailing the certificate program outline and require a short application via an online form.