EDI News

Tammara Watts, MD, PhD, is the associate director of the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the Duke Cancer Institute. She is charged with strategic planning and implementation of the DCI’s Plan to Enhance Diversity (PED).

The Duke University School of Medicine Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion has announced the recipients of the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Catalyst Fund.

For Debra Ragland, PhD, who works closely with PhD students in the School of Medicine, addressing issues related to equity, diversity, and inclusion in the biosciences is simple. She says it’s a matter of creating a supportive environment where the students feel heard.

In this month’s EDI Spotlight, Madhav Swaminathan, MD shares how he became involved with a group focused on increasing inclusion of neurodiversity, a disability that he says is often hidden yet deserves more attention in EDI work.

Duke University and North Carolina Central University recently received the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Institutional Excellence in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) in Biomedical and Behavioral Research Prize. The two schools were jointly awarded a $100,000 prize for demonstrating exceptional dedication and innovation in fostering DEIA within research environments. 

Over the 26 years she has been at Duke, Jeanine Holland has been driven by a desire to serve others and make a lasting difference on local communities. In this month’s Spotlight, Holland discusses her passion for service, which was instilled in her as a child and remains part of who she is.

In this month’s EDI Spotlight, Anakwenze shares how he’s trying to make the experience of finding mentors a bit easier for today’s underrepresented in medicine students, both in his role as shoulder section head in the Duke Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and as diversity committee chair for the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons.

Created by two medical students in fall 2022, the Native and Indigenous Medical Student Association offers students support, a sense of community, and much-needed mentors.

The Sexual and Gender Diversity Advisory Council (SAGDAC) is a think tank that helps support collaboration and a wide range of innovative LGBTQ+ initiatives across Duke.

A student-led presentation on the Medical Spanish Course at Duke won second place in a poster competition at the Joint National Meeting for the Medical Organization for Latino Advancement (MOLA) and the National Association of Medical Spanish.