Towards an Anti-Racist Climate in Nursing

(Project completed 2021) Systems of oppression gain their power from silence. Faculty in the School of Nursing and across the country are not always comfortable engaging in conversations about race and racism, but these discussions are necessary in order to address the disproportionately poor health outcomes experienced by BIPOC. In response to student and faculty concerns, this project seeks to move our school towards an antiracist climate by targeting multiple layers. The inner layer involves the creation of a graduate elective, “Race, Power, Privilege, Health” (offered Fall 2020), the next layer seeks to elevate the consciousness and increase the capacity of faculty, staff, and student leaders by providing training utilizing the “Groundwater Analysis” approach to refocus our equity lens. The outer layer consists of continued efforts to increase comfort discussing the topics of race and racism via our monthly faculty/staff book club and our school wide movie nights. The next step of the project entails the compilation of a toolkit for antiracist teaching based on a multidisciplinary review of the literature and needs assessments of the faculty and students. The utility of the toolkit will span beyond nursing into the other health professions schools and to the university at large.