Above: Ben Alman, MD, leading a discussion “Why Orthopaedics/Duke” with the Diversity Committee

Above: Mohammed Omer presenting on Diversity in Orthopaedic Surgery

Over the past several months, the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery has been hosting meetings to discuss diversity and inclusion within the Department in an effort to help grow the pipeline of underrepresented minorities and females who would enter the Orthopaedic field and to also, more locally, better understand what the Department itself could do to attract more underrepresented minorities and females. As part of these meetings, four pressure points were identified and from there four subcommittees were established to focus on these areas: Mentorship, Early Exposure to Orthopaedics, Cultural and Social Inclusion, and how we can represent Duke Orthopaedics externally to increase visibility around our desire to attract underrepresented minorities and females.

Each subcommittee was charged with presenting a 5 slide PowerPoint to isolate the top 5 pressure points/issues of each category and to come forward with recommendations for each that would be most impactful in addressing those issues/opportunities. Earlier this week, the following medical students who are part of our committees led these presentations and did a fabulous job: Perez Agaba, Keithara Davis, Christopher Calixte, Elshaday Belay, and Mohammed Omer.

The Diversity Committee was unanimous in its support of these presentations, which will now be brought forward to Dr. Alman, who will discuss these proposals with ODAC.  On top of this, Drs. Brigman and Leversedge led a great discussion with Judy Seidenstein of how we could approach the GME culture and our resident selection process with these concepts in mind.

The future of Duke Orthopaedics is bright, and we are excited to continue building a culture that welcomes and fosters diversity and inclusion. We look forward to continuing to provide updates on the progress being made and how every member of the Duke Orthopaedics community can become involved. We encourage you to visit our Multicultural Resource Center, which we are confident will continue to grow as we grow as a department.