Academic and Research Skills
Clinical Research
Core Curriculum for Fellows
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Emergency Medicine
General Pediatrics
Hospital Medicine
Quality Improvement/Patient Safety
Amy Starmer, MD, MPH (she/her/hers)
Associate Medical Director of Quality
Medicine
Boston Children's Hospital
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Session
Description: Evidence-based clinical guidelines are important tools for providing high quality, standardized care, which is consistent and equitable. The appropriate role of race and/or ethnicity as a variable in medical research and clinical decision-making, including their inclusion in clinical guidelines, is actively debated. A recent systematic review showed that race/ethnicity terms appear in 30 percent of all pediatric clinical guidelines with potentially negative effects in 50% of cases. In response to this reality, national organizations are developing equity-based approaches to the review, development, and implementation of clinical guidelines. However, national efforts may take time, leaving individual clinicians and healthcare organizations to determine how to approach this topic more immediately in local practice. One children’s hospital developed a framework to review race/ethnicity terms found in its local institutional library of clinical guidelines (“clinical pathways”), providing a practical roadmap for other clinicians and institutions that may wish to do the same. Finally, measurement will be important to assess the extent to which guidelines mitigate or exacerbate health inequities, as well as to understand whether modifications to race and ethnicity in guidelines have the intended effect of promoting equity over time.
This session will describe the extent to which race/ethnicity are currently included in pediatric clinical guidelines and will review local and national efforts addressing this issue. Participants will be able to apply existing frameworks to interpret, develop, and/or revise clinical guidelines at their own institutions. The session will conclude with a panel discussion to highlight areas of opportunity for next steps and collaboration.
Speaker: Amy J. Starmer, MD, MPH (she/her/hers) – Boston Children's Hospital
Speaker: Joseph L. Wright, MD MPH – University of Maryland Schools of Medicine and Public Health
Speaker: Joel Tieder, MD. MPH (he/him/his) – Seattle Children's and the University of WA
Speaker: Courtney A. Gilliam, MD (she/her/hers) – Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
Speaker: Jeffrey Yaeger, MD, MPH (he/him/his) – Golisano Children's Hospital at The University of Rochester Medical Center
Speaker: Robert H. Rosen, MD (he/him/his) – Boston Children's Hospital
Speaker: Tiffani J. Johnson, MD, Mac (she/her/hers) – University of California, Davis, School of Medicine
Speaker: Amy J. Starmer, MD, MPH (she/her/hers) – Boston Children's Hospital
Speaker: Joel Tieder, MD. MPH (he/him/his) – Seattle Children's and the University of WA