Justice, Equity, and Inclusion in a School of Nursing: A Quality Improvement Program

BACKGROUND

Despite the increased racial and ethnic diversity in the general population of the United States, the nursing workforce remains mostly White. Schools of nursing (SON) have increased recruitment and enrollment; however, students who represent racial and ethnic minoritized groups experience microaggressions, injustice, and social exclusion. This quality improvement program sought to equip faculty with skills to create a just and inclusive SON. The program was guided by the Institute for Healthcare's Model for Improvement.

METHOD

Five workshops were developed and implemented during two semesters. Workshops were led and moderated by a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant.

RESULTS

After the workshops, participants committed to create an inclusive environment, intervene when microaggressions occurred, implement curricular changes, and recognize themselves as members of a privileged group. Postworkshop discussions and reflections led to new initiatives in the SON.

CONCLUSION

This faculty development program demonstrates programs to enhance justice, equity, and inclusion can be implemented successfully within SON. [J Nurs Educ. 2023;62(1):20-27.].

Disrupting Bias Without Trainings: The Effect of Equity Advocates on Faculty Search Committees

Many institutions of higher education have implemented workshops for hiring committee members to familiarize them with the pernicious effects of implicit bias and how to counteract them. Unfortunately, the enthusiasm for implicit bias trainings is not matched by the evidence for their effectiveness. Recognizing the difficulty of removing entrenched biases and the potential for trainings to backfire, we introduced the role of equity advocate (EA) at one institution. EAs are trained volunteer faculty and staff members who serve on search committees outside their home departments to identify behaviors and judgments that might have a disparate racial effect in hiring. We conducted focus groups to document the perspectives of both EAs and non-EA search committee members who completed a cycle of academic hiring. Search committee members credited EAs with helping to mitigate bias by questioning their assumptions and introducing standardized tools for evaluating candidates. By contrast, EAs reported a more contentious relationship with the rest of the search committee and expressed less confidence that the process was free from bias. Both groups agreed that the EAs added valuable race-conscious equitable practices, and untrained committee members identified ways they could apply the lessons of bias reduction in other parts of their professional roles. Our study provides evidence for how to engage all faculty and staff members in sustainable, equity-minded efforts.

Species-specific features of DARC, the primate receptor for Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium knowlesi

The DARC (Duffy antigen/receptor for chemokines) gene, also called Duffy or FY, encodes a membrane-bound chemokine receptor. Two malaria parasites, Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium knowlesi, use DARC to trigger internalization into red blood cells. Although much has been reported on the evolution of DARC null alleles, little is known about the evolution of the coding portion of this gene or the role that protein sequence divergence in this receptor may play in disease susceptibility or zoonosis. Here, we show that the Plasmodium interaction domain of DARC is nearly invariant in the human population, suggesting that coding polymorphism there is unlikely to play a role in differential susceptibility to infection. However, an analysis of DARC orthologs from 35 simian primate species reveals high levels of sequence divergence in the Plasmodium interaction domain. Signatures of positive selection in this domain indicate that species-specific mutations in the protein sequence of DARC could serve as barriers to the transmission of Plasmodium between primate species.