Equity in healthcare and healthcare settings impacts, providers, patients and family members. For health professions students in medical school, lack of equity can impact not only personal well-being, but may impact overall academic success. Understanding the barriers, both implicit and explicit that one may experience as a Black student, resident or fellow, will be important for changing medical education and equal treatment of all.

Only you know your lived experience as a person who identifies as Black and as a medical student, resident, or fellow. Choosing to participate in this study, which is totally voluntary, can help to affect change in current practice in medical education and to assist future generations of medical students to more equitable educational opportunities and their treatment during the academic and residential years.

The Universities Institutional Review Boards (IRB) have approved this study and ranked it as low risk to participants. As will any study in which individuals are interviewed, there remains nominal risk of identification. Our study team has put into place everything possible to protect your identity as a participant. Each individual interviewed as a part of this study will be de-identified and each interview transcript will be numbered consecutively, and participants will be labeled with a specific code (i.e. Subject 1, Subject 2.) Your name will never be used in the transcripts or included in any write-ups. Interviewers will be unassociated with UMKC to eliminate retribution for any answers given. More importantly, interviewers have walked in your shoes and shared similar experiences with you and therefore stand in solidarity with you for a solution. The only persons who will have access to your research records are the study personnel listed on this website, the Institutional Review Board (IRB), and any other person, agency, or sponsor as required by law. The information from this study may be published in scientific journals or presented at scientific meetings but the data will be reported as group or summarized and your identity will be kept strictly confidential. All transcribed documents art kept in a  password protected computer within a locked lab.

As a participant, you have the right to withdraw from the study at anytime and NOT to have data collected during the interview used. Withdrawal can occur after agreeing to be interviewed, during the interview process, or after the interview has been concluded.