Keynote Plenary / Friday, September 10, 2021, 12:00 – 1:15 pm CT          

Beyond Bias Training: Lessons in Anti-Racist Organizing in Medicine with White Coats for Black Lives

Presented by:
Dorothy Charles, MD
Resident Physician, University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria (UICOMP) Family Medicine & Organizer, White Coats for Black Lives

Session information:
After the murder of George Floyd this past summer of 2020, corporations and nonprofits -- including medical schools and hospital systems -- went out of their way to say "Black Lives Matter" and to condemn racism. While many applauded these gestures, others who had been involved with White Coats for Black Lives (WC4BL) since its inception in late 2014/early 2015 remained skeptical, knowing that these same institutions were either apathetic to or actively hostile toward trainee organizing a short 5-6 years prior. Given this renewed institutional interest in addressing racism, learn from one of the founding organizers of WC4BL how to recognize racist practices and structures within your own organization and how to advocate for change beyond employee implicit bias training.

Learning objectives:
•    Identify racism, rather than race, as the driver of health inequities
•    Describe how "race" used in disease risk stratification and medical decision-making reinforces the pseudoscience of biological race
•    Recognize institutionalized racism as interlocking systems of oppression beyond the social determinants of health
•    Utilize the WC4BL Racial Justice Report Card as a tool for identifying racial inequities within your own institution

Speaker Bio:
Dorothy N. Charles, MD, is a third-year family medicine resident at the University of Illinois - Peoria. She completed her undergraduate degree in molecular biology at Princeton University and her medical education at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 2014, she has advocated for racial justice in medicine through her work as an organizer and founding member of White Coats for Black Lives (WC4BL). As a medical student, she was involved in single payer activism
through Students for a National Health Program, spearheaded the inaugural and second annual Philadelphia-area WC4BL Conference on Racism in Medicine; and coordinated absentee voting among hospitalized patients in 2016, which she later helped expand into Presby Votes (now known as Penn Med Votes) in conjunction with Penn Law students. She believes that medicine can be a powerful tool for fighting against social inequities and is passionate about eliminating racial maternal-child health
disparities. As a family physician, she feels well-positioned to address the specific needs of Black moms and babies and hopes to focus her future practice on the health and well-being of Black families. After a day on the wards, you can find Dorothy tweeting (follow her! @dn_charles), listening to podcasts about cults and true crime and cuddling with her cat Panda. Golden weekends are spent in St. Louis, where her husband (an MD/PhD student at Washington University) lives. Together, they enjoy
hiking, visiting the sea lions at the (free!) St. Louis Zoo, and binging Netflix shows.