Board Director News

Progress Report: ABPMR Commitment to Racial Diversity and Equity

Last June, the ABPMR made a commitment to our diplomates and to the public. In it, we affirmed our commitment to high-quality health care for Black, Indigenous, and other people of color and acknowledged the inequities experienced by these populations. We also committed to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion at all levels of board activities and committed to several concrete actions to drive this commitment forward.

Since we released the statement last year, we have:

• Conducted an all-ABPMR board director and staff retreat on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion with experts in the field of DEI; the retreat covered unconscious bias and a framework for action

• Upgraded and expanded unconscious/implicit bias training for oral examiners, including new online resources and a new reference sheet to use during the exam

• Established a DEI Task Force to continue the work started at the retreat, including collecting race and ethnicity data in order to increase the racial diversity of volunteers and board directors

Elected the first African-American physiatrist to the ABPMR board of directors

We are proud of the work that we have begun, but we also know that it is just the beginning of a long, sustained effort in this area, and there is still much to learn and much to do. As other racial and ethnic groups continue to experience inequities and discrimination, the ABPMR wants to again affirm: We are committed to equal access to quality health care for all, and to working toward eliminating racism that impacts our organization, our health care system, and our communities.


Originally Published: April 09, 2021