EDI News

Faculty and staff members honored for making health care more efficient, diverse

The members of Duke’s faculty and staff honored at Tuesday’s Teamwork and Diversity Awards have all played a role in making health care – both at Duke and beyond – more diverse and efficient.

Dr. Kenyon Railey

Assistant professor within the Department of Community and Medicine and assistant chief diversity officer in the School of Medicine Office of Diversity & Inclusion. A man of many trades, Railey also sees patients as a family physician at the Duke Family Medical Center.

Years at Duke: Nine

Through a recently awarded K12 grant, the Department of Population Health Sciences will train Dissemination and Implementation (D&I) scholars to use rigorous qualitative and quantitative methods that will impact cardiovascular health outcomes. The program will be spearheaded by its Program Director, Hayden B. Bosworth, PhD, and Associate Director, Ebony Boulware, MD, PhD.

Dear Colleagues, 

Damon Tweedy, MD, has been named the Solomon Carter Fuller Award recipient for his pioneering work in addressing disparities in the medical profession. Dr. Tweedy, an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, is a New York Times bestselling author of the book Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine. Dr.

Several research universities are leveraging targeted programs and data analysis to improve the representation and achievement levels of minority, low-income and first-generation college students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, according to three researchers who presented results at the 2017 AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston.

Physician-scientist Kafui Dzirasa, MD, PhD, is featured in a new video as part of the “Black Men in White Coats” video series. Dzirasa, who earned his Ph.D. and M.D. from Duke, is an assistant professor in the departments of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and neurobiology and a member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. He was among 106 researchers in 2016 to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from former President Barack Obama.

From breathing new life into the West Union to starting a departmental blog about diversity and inclusion, Duke employees are being recognized for their teamwork and diversity efforts over the past year.

Two of Duke’s highest honors, the Teamwork and Diversity awards, are presented every year to employees who foster collaboration, cooperation and open communication as a team or demonstrate a respect and value for differing backgrounds and points of view.

Last week, more than 50 School of Medicine (SoM) faculty, staff and students – most members of the school’s Inclusion Council – attended a symposium, “Leading Diversity and Inclusion Change:  A Call to Action,” hosted by the SoM Office of Diversity & Inclusion.

Although the number of black men graduating from college continues to increase, the number of black men applying to medical school has dropped during the past 4 decades. Last year, the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) released a report focused on this issue entitled, “Altering the Course: Black Males in Medicine.” In it, the AAMC reports that in 2014 1,337 black males applied to medical school compared to 1,410 in 1978.