Date/Time
Date(s) - December 5, 2023
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

REGISTER HERE: https://bit.ly/LunchLabDec2023

We all got counted. Now What? Race-based data collection, “at risk” learners, surveillance, and the myth of liberation in medical education research

What does it mean to identify “at-risk” medical learners? Race-based data collection is considered a tool for anti-racism practice within education. Proponents of such data in research often do so with good intentions, believing its importance in addressing racial inequities. But what about its construct validity, conflation with quantifying racism and the role these datasets play in surveillance and the ongoing oppression of equity-deserving communities?

Data does not exist in a vacuum; nor do our learners. Understanding their experiences involves data contextualization and governance: Who owns it? How is it stored? How is it traded? Large datasets of our socially constructed identities are often used to paint a narrative of equity-deserving communities. Who then owns their stories? On Dec 5th, we’ll be diving into how colonialism and institutionalized oppression in our research practices can have far-reaching consequences for racialized learners and communities.

About Dr. Anjali Menezes
Dr. Anjali Menezes is a family physician with special interests in trauma-informed care, medical education, and racism in medical training, her career thus far is an eclectic mix of clinical work, teaching, mentoring, research, scholarly work and community activism. Her current focus is on studying racial differentials in attainment. In 2020, as a family medicine resident at McMaster, she co-founded and served as chair of Racialized Residents at McMaster peer support network, followed by an enhanced skills PGY3 year at Western University in Academic Family Medicine, where she focussed on deepening her understanding of racial identity formation and racism in medical education.

In 2021, she created and currently leads the Differential Attainment REsearch (DARe) Group Collaborative:  a growing Canadian national network of exclusively  racialized academics studying and addressing the racial attainment gap in medical and health professional training and career outcomes. A group that now exceeds 30, their philosophy is that we must begin first and foremost with building community. Only then can we co-imagine and co-create a vision for a brighter, more equitable world. The DARe Group has delivered faculty development workshops and talks faculties and conferences across Ontario and North America and are currently leading the implementation and evaluation of a racialized mentorship network for medical learners in the Faculty of Health Sciences.