TCU School of Medicine Receives National Recognition for Diversity Programs

FORT WORTH – The TCU School of Medicine received its second recognition from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine – the 2021 Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award.

“It’s the TCU medical school’s responsibility to ensure that we train a physician workforce who will care for all in our society and most notably the underserved,” Stuart D. Flynn, M.D., Founding Dean of TCU School of Medicine said at a celebration at TCU in February. “We embrace that. I think this HEED Award is a great reflection on this mission and our core values of the school of medicine’s deep and abiding commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.”

INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine is the oldest and largest diversity-focused publication in higher education. The Health Professions HEED Award is open to all accredited U.S. and Canadian health profession schools including, but not limited to, medical, dental, pharmacy, nursing, veterinary and osteopathic medical schools. The TCU School of Medicine was one of 18 medical institutions chosen for the national honor.

“This is amazing for a new medical school to be considered excellent in diversity, equity and inclusion,” Lisa McBride, Ph.D., Associate Dean of Diversity and Inclusion at TCU School of Medicine, said. “It puts us in the company of longstanding medical schools. It has also helped us with student recruitment. That wouldn’t be possible without the HEED Award.”

For four years in a row, TCU has been honored with the HEED Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine. “All of you are the champions of this effort,” TCU Chancellor Victor J. Boschini, Jr. said.

TCU College of Science & Engineering also was one of 79 universities to receive the 2021 Inspiring Programs in STEM Award for its STEM Scholar program. The program covers the full cost of TCU attendance for four years for selected students and is designed to enrich the TCU learning experience while bringing diverse populations together.

Zoranna Jones, Ph.D., inaugural assistant dean for the TCU School of Interdisciplinary Studies, launched the program in 2018.

“This program is a truly extraordinary opportunity for students here at TCU,” Jones said. “This is a talented group of leaders.”

This is the TCU School of Medicine’s second year in a row receiving the Health Professions Heed Award. The most recent cohort of medical students, the Class of 2025, had 70% of the students self-identifying with one or more of the three school-defined diversity domains which are race/ethnicity, LGBTQ and socio-economic limitation.

“This also helps us attract faculty and staff who are committed to not only diversity but also social justice,” McBride said.

Lenore Pearlstein, the president and co-owner of Potomac Publishing, Inc. and co-publisher of INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, took over the magazine in 2007 and created the HEED Awards in 2012.

She was on TCU’s campus to deliver the award to Dean Flynn and Dr. McBride in late February. Receiving the prestigious honor gives colleges, universities and medical institutions the impetus to keep doing the work, according to Pearlstein.

“It also lets their constituents know that they are doing great work,” Pearlstein said. “It lets them know that this is what we want to get to and this is what we hope to accomplish.”

The Liaison Committee On Medical Education (LCME), the national accrediting body of M.D. degree granting medical schools in the U.S., includes and stresses the importance of diversity/pipeline programs and partnerships in their 12 LCME Standards, which outlines the functions and structures of a medical school.

A medical school has to have effective policies and practices in place, and engages in ongoing, systematic, and focused recruitment and retention activities, to achieve mission-appropriate diversity outcomes among its students, faculty, senior administrative staff, and other relevant members of its academic community, according to the LCME.

Those activities must include the use of programs and/or partnerships aimed at achieving diversity among qualified applicants for medical school admission and a continued evaluation of those program and partnership outcomes.

“We’ve designed our programs to really be feeders or address the leaky pipeline,” McBride said.

Since admitting its first class of medical students in 2019, the medical schools’ Diversity & Inclusion Office has launched a Latina STEM fellowship in collaboration with Tarrant Community College.

They have also partnered with the school’s Student National Medical Association (SNMA) chapter for virtual roundtable discussions on mental health in the Black community. There have been mentorship programs organized for students, along with public discussions utilizing Facebook Live to talk about national issues that affect public health in communities of color.

One of their new programs launched in 2021 is a speaker series held on TCU’s campus called, “Black Men in White Coats”.

The DEI office brought 40 teens from the Young Men’s Leadership Academy in Fort Worth onto campus to receive mentorship from African American male physicians in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

“It’s one of the programs that I am most proud of,” McBride said. “We know that less than 2 precent of practicing physicians are African American men. We feel that we are addressing the study by the National Academy of Medicine about the need of more African American men in medicine to address this crisis.”

The continued success of the school of medicine’s efforts to embrace diversity will be impactful for Fort Worth and its surrounding areas, Dean Flynn added.

“It is amazing to have Lisa McBride here leading this with her passion, commitment and beautiful forward-looking vision of diversity and inclusion for our medical school and our university.” said Dean Flynn. “This is the way that the medical school can put down roots in Fort Worth and the surrounding community.”