July 3, 2024
How We Measure What Matters
Newsletter sent July 3, 2024, written by Isabel Chen.
My name is Isabel Chen (she/her/hers), MD MPH, and I have the privilege of serving as the Program Director of the Social Mission Metrics Initiative. I joined the Social Mission Alliance as a medical student and served in various roles from leading the learner community (“Young Beyond Flexnerians”) and conference planning, to managing Communications and serving as a Board member.
Currently, I am an Associate Professor Health Systems Science at the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, where my work is grounded in improving the humanitarian potential of healthcare through education, research, and advocacy initiatives that improve health equity. I design innovative curricula on systems thinking, community engagement, and service-learning in my role as the Co-Course Director for Service-Learning, which strives to train future practitioners who are committed to the empowerment of communities through advocacy and organizing. I completed my Family Medicine residency training at Kaiser Permanente where I was Chief of Social Mission & Advocacy and am Board Certified in both Family Medicine and Addiction Medicine.
After the groundswell of enthusiasm from our Conferences and our return to our home institutions, I often wonder how our schools foster conditions for our work toward social mission transformation. What if our work was assessed and our programs evaluated on their contributions to social mission – the advancement of equity and justice for the communities we serve?
This is exactly our priority with the Social Mission Metrics Initiative. We seek to drive our social mission movement through a combination of institutional ratings, innovative best practices and resources, and engagement to catalyze our work toward broader health professions training transformation.
And this August 2024, our team will launch an updated version of the Social Mission Metrics Self-Assessment Survey for medical schools. This refreshed survey, last circulated to medical schools in 2019, reflects the evolution in our social, political, and educational consciousness as we hold our institutions responsible for modeling and training learners to center health equity.
Just as last time, the data schools provide will not be used to “rank” or “list” programs, but will enable schools to benchmark and track what they are doing regarding social mission. We invite you to join us in inviting medical school leaders to participate in this survey.
Will you join us in our work and measure what matters?
✉ Sign up for the Health Advocate Insights Newsletter – Are you passionate about the intersection between social mission and health professions advocacy? You’re invited to sign up for SMA’s monthly advocacy newsletter.
Recognizing Social Mission Commitment
To recognize programs that have committed to social mission by taking the Social Mission Metrics Self-Assessment, we are pleased to offer a new digital asset, the Social Mission Metrics Badge. This badge is a public display of a school’s commitment to establishing social mission baselines and improvement. To encourage honesty in self-evaluations, the badge is not based on scores.
Currently in it’s initial phase, a select number of schools were invited to be a 2024 Inaugural Supporter of this new digital badge. We are thankful for the support from:
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A.T. Still University
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Michigan State University College of Human Medicine
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Frontier Nursing University
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Morehouse School of Medicine
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Western Michigan Homer Stryker School of Medicine
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Mercy University School of Nursing
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Emory Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing
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Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine
Medical schools that participate in the 2024 Social Mission Metrics Self-Assessment will be eligible to purchase a badge, regardless of scoring.
Join for a live discussion with Davarian Baldwin
Announcing the NEW Social Mission Alliance Book Club 📖
Join us August 19 as we discuss Davarian Baldwin’s book, “In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering American Cities.”
💬“In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower is a wake-up call to the reality that higher education is no longer the ubiquitous public good it was once thought to be. But as Baldwin shows, there is an alternative vision for urban life, one that necessitates a more equitable relationship between our cities and our universities.”
Registration required: https://bit.ly/3K9raBf
Buy the book.
We look forward to opening a virtual space for meaningful conversation about social mission in health professions education outside of our conferences. During the book club event, Dr. Baldwin will join us for a live Q&A moderated by one of our student members, followed by a group discussion.
