About the Center of Excellence in Diversity
Stanford's Commitment to Cultural Diversity
Stanford has a rich history of reaching out to underserved communities. California generally, and Santa Clara County specifically, are home to significant numbers of low-income immigrants, minorities, and other disadvantaged patient populations. For decades, the Stanford School of Medicine has affiliated with clinical facilities that provide care to these groups throughout Santa Clara County.
The School of Medicine has broadened its commitment by incorporating minority perspectives into the curriculum, promoting diversity in its faculty and students, and establishing diverse health programs to encourage minority and disadvantaged youth from around the nation to consider health careers.
The changing demographics of our nation, combined with the paucity of minority academicians, clinicians, and researchers, present significant challenges for medical education and academic medicine. The Center of Excellence supports Stanford University School of Medicine’s efforts to meet these challenges, ensuring that the school’s 25-year commitment to minority education is not only continued but expanded to meet the needs of the 21st century.
The Center of Excellence (COE) in Diversity
Due to the efforts of Drs. Fernando Mendoza and Ronald D. Garcia, the COE was established in 1993 through federal grant support from the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Bureau of Health Professions. Its missions are to increase diversity in the number of leaders in academic and clinical medicine, and to expand Stanford’s capacity to offer information, research, and training on minority health care issues.
COE’s major programmatic areas include:
- Health Professions Pipeline
- Facilitate premedical student conferences such as the Stanford University Minority Medical Allliance (SUMMA) Conference.
- Sponsor leadership training workshops for minority premedical students.
- Establish premedical health career clubs at two and four year institutions in northern California.
- Offer a visiting clerkship program for senior diverse medical students to come to Stanford.
- Student recruitment and development
- Recruitment trips to four-year and community colleges.
- Attend regional recruitment events that target diverse students.
- Leadership development program for minority and disadvantaged medical students.
- Offer individual personal and professional advising for minority medical students.
- Offer a USMLE, Step 1 board review course.
- Recruitment trips to four-year and community colleges.
- Information and research on minority health issues
- Early Matriculation Program (EMP) to provide summer research opportunities for entering minority and disadvantaged medical students.
- Research mentor program, which connects diverse students to a scholarly mentor early in their education at Stanford.
- Assist medical students in the development of research proposals.
- COE summer stipend program, which permits opportunities for students to participate in a project related to a minority health or health disparity issue.
- Early Matriculation Program (EMP) to provide summer research opportunities for entering minority and disadvantaged medical students.
- Cultural Medicine Curriculum
- Offer Ethnicity and Medicine, which is an elective course that examines the role of race, ethnicity, and language on clinician-patient interactions.
- Sponsor the Pfeiffer Visiting Scholars Lecture, which is a quarterly guest lecture series that brings distinguished minority scholars to campus.
- Develop cultural medicine in the required preclinical and clinical curriculum.
- Faculty Recruitment and Development
- Offer three faculty development awards, which will provide release time for junior faculty to develop their academic career plans.
- Support one COE Fellowship. This fellowship is a one-year award to promote a career in academic medicine.
- Assist faculty to develop their academic careers. This will include the assessment of academic career plans for minority junior faculty and the development of an Individualized Academic Development Plan (IADP).
- Provide a research associate mentor to assist in the development of a research agenda, review of methodology, and support for writing and publication.
- Provide travel funds, for diverse faculty to pursue professional development activities such as conferences and training programs.
