Episode 19: AMA Organizational Strategic Plan to Advance Health Equity

Collection IV: policies towards disability inclusivity in the health sciences.

Article or Publication discussed: AMA’s

Authors: AMA (2024-2025)

Citation: “AMA Organizational Strategic Plan to Advance Health Equity 2024-2025.” 2024. American Medical Association. June, 2024. https://www.ama-assn.org/about/leadership/ama-s-2024-2025-strategic-plan-advance-health-equity.

Description: Research and Resource Rounds Episode 19 launches Collection IV: policies towards disability inclusivity in the health sciences. The episode examines how the AMA's 2024-2025 Organizational Strategic Plan to Advance Health Equity integrates disability consciousness into its vision for healthcare transformation. The 2024 Plan builds on the foundation laid by AMA's (original) 2021 Strategic Plan. Both plans explicitly name ableism and racism as interconnected systems of oppression. The episode provides an overview of the 2024 strategic plan, including of the five strategic approaches towards health equity identified in the plans: embed equity, build alliances and share power, ensure equity in innovation, push upstream, and foster pathways. The AMA's plan and associated resources show notable progress since 2021, including the establishment of a disability employee resource group, educational partnerships including disability-focused modules on the AMA Ed Hub by the Docs With Disabilities Initiative, and policy adoption on organ transplant equity and barriers in medical education for disabled trainees.

Producer: Zoey Martin Lockhart, Lisa Meeks

Audio Engineer: Jacob Feeman

Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xWcJBRtUFh4HIncv3ITe6TAk8ym8GMyd/edit

Release: June 2025

Episode 18: “Physicians’ Perceptions Of People With Disability And Their Health Care.”

Collection III: Disability in health sciences: the need for and benefits of inclusion

This collection features studies and testimonials that examine the current state of disability representation among health sciences students and professionals and that demonstrate how the presence of disabled healthcare practitioners and trainees benefits both patients and clinicians/trainees.

Key works in this emerging literature are gathered in this cluster that includes qualitative studies, the results of quantitative data analyses, and personal testimonials.

Title of Featured Article: “Physicians’ Perceptions Of People With Disability And Their Health Care.

Authors: Lisa I. Iezzoni, Sowmya R. Rao, Julie Ressalam, Dragana Bolcic-Jankovic, Nicole D. Agaronnik, Karen Donelan, Tara Lagu, and Eric G. Campbell

Link: https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.01452

Description: In their pioneering study, the authors’ project sought to understand physicians’ attitudes on people with disability, including physicians’ comfort treating these patients or welcoming them into their practices. Results show that many physicians lack confidence in providing equivalent quality care to disabled patients and non-disabled patients and that a vast majority (82.4%) of doctors believed that significantly disabled people have a worse quality of life–a sentiment contrary to the experiences and responses of many disabled people. Yet, encouragingly, nearly 80% of physician respondents also expressed the importance of understanding disabled patients. The authors suggest that the substantial explicit disability bias expressed by respondents is rooted in inadequate and inaccurate education about disability and disabled people in medical education and argue for improved training and evaluation of biases among key triage teams and medical decision-makers.

Producer: Zoey Martin Lockhart, Lisa Meeks

Audio Engineer: Jacob Feeman

Transcript link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rk1Kk5oJ4tetma1pumYmobiFuHrS8ERs5qxK7o9dkAA/edit?usp=sharing

Keywords: Patients with Disability / disabled patients, Ableism

Medical Education, Implicit bias, Disability attitudes, DocsWithDisabilities, Disability

Patient Care

Collection III: Disability in health sciences: the need for and benefits of inclusion

This collection features studies and testimonials that  examine the current state of disability representation among health sciences students and professionals and that demonstrate how the presence of disabled healthcare practitioners and trainees benefits both patients and clinicians/trainees.

Key works in this emerging literature are gathered in this cluster that includes qualitative studies, the results of quantitative data analyses, and personal testimonials.

Title of Featured Article: Being on Both Sides’: Canadian Medical Students’ Experiences With Disability, the Hidden Curriculum, and Professional Identity Construction

Collection III: Disability in health sciences: the need for and benefits of inclusion

Authors: Erene Stergiopoulos, Oshan Fernando, and Maria Athina Martimianakis

 Article Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29794527/

Episode Link:  https://bit.ly/DWDI_RR_17

Description: Stergiopoulos’, Fernando’s, and Martimianakis’ research article investigates how medical discourses shape the conceptualizations of the prototypical “good medical student” and “good patient” roles as featuring mutually exclusive characteristics. They explore how disabled medical students’ experiences during training and professional identity construction are shaped and hold complexity as students navigate positions in both these roles—as both patients and medical trainees. The authors drew on critical discourse analysis to analyze text and interviews, developing codes informed by academic work on the Hidden Curriculum and professional identity construction. Results show that the dominant portrayals of the “good student” and “good patient” roles, robustly and vividly constructed by medical discourse, are juxtaposing and mutually exclusive.

Producer: Zoey Martin Lockhart, Lisa Meeks

Audio Engineer: Jacob Feeman

Transcript

Release: Feb 2024

Keywords:

Medical students; Patient role; Wellbeing; Medical School; Disability Inclusion; Patient Care

DSM; Psychiatric Illness; Mental Illness; Mental Health; Disclosure; Ableism; Medical Education 

Learning Disabilities; Medical culture; Culture of Medicine; Diversity in Medicine; Disability Education