Updated February 19, 2021
Media outlets reported that the Department of Surgery’s Anti-Racism and Health Equity Initiative is being launched with a lecture by author and activist Cornel West, PhD. Karole Collier, a fourth-year medical student in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a member of the panel that followed the lecture, said that while the numbers of people of color in surgery are still “dismal,” she applauded the efforts of department chair Steven D. Schwaitzberg, MD. “I really look forward to seeing more people get engaged with this conversation, to push themselves to think possibly a little bit differently and extend those conversations in their own homes,” she said.