Department Values Statement

As members of the UC San Diego Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, we proudly commit ourselves to fostering a community that stands firmly against racism, hate, sexism, and any other form of exclusion and discrimination. We recognize and embrace our opportunity to cultivate an academic environment that champions diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice. With this declaration, we affirm our dedication to these values and acknowledge the importance of upholding them in all aspects of our work.

We strive to ensure a departmental culture and environment that recognizes, respects, and values diverse identities including ability, age, ancestry, carceral status, ethnicity, family status, gender expression, immigration status, language, military experience, race, religion, sexuality, and socioeconomic status.

We strive to be anti-racist and thereby acknowledge and recognize the following:

• Acts of racism and hate are present, persistent, and pervasive across our global community and have harmful effects on our trainees, faculty, staff, patients, and communities.
• Race does not represent biologic variation among humans – rather, race is socially constructed.
• Racism, not race, affects health care, health, and health outcomes.
• Interpersonal, systemic, and institutional racism, through acts of omission or commission, exists in our health care institutions.
• Foundational knowledge in our specialty emanated in part from inhumane experimentation on Black women.
• Unethical, coerced, involuntary medical surgeries, experiments, and treatments are heinous acts and forms of bias that have adversely affected the well-being of individuals, particularly those incarcerated and communities experiencing inequities and injustice.

For these reasons, we make the following commitments to our colleagues, our patients and their families, our learners and trainees, and stakeholders:

• We will not tolerate racism, hate, sexism, nor discrimination in our clinical spaces, in our learning spaces, in our research spaces, or our administrative spaces.
• We commit to examining and correcting our own individual unconscious and conscious biases related to all forms of discrimination.
• We commit to creating and adopting policies and practices that improve outcomes and eliminate healthcare inequities.
• We commit to intentional anti-racist and justice-oriented actions across our department, health system, and community. These actions include:
  
  • Ensuring high visibility of our department’s value statement and commitment to a culture of anti-racism and anti-hate.
  • Elevating equity-focused training through Culture and Justice Grand Rounds, required implicit bias training, and trainee and faculty curricula.
  • Ensuring accountability through regular quantitative and qualitative assessments of anti-racism culture, including updates of the department journey map.
  • Financially supporting the Culture and Justice Quorum and its mission areas.
  • Creating and utilizing an internal reporting system for ongoing accountability of equity and justice.
• We commit to speaking out when we recognize discrimination, hate, sexist, and racist incidents.
• We commit to challenging norms that marginalize or prevent our colleagues from advancing fully in their training and careers.
• We commit to encouraging research collaborations focused on addressing health inequities and injustice.
• We commit to partnering with our communities to promote justice and healing.
• We commit to reflecting on our growth and direction on this journey together.

We stand together in this commitment to champion equity and justice.