A novel emergency medicine cultural competency curriculum addressing health care disparities.

Background: Effective cultural competency (CC) training for future health professionals is an important first step towards improving healthcare disparities (HCD). The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) now requires that institutions train residents and faculty members in CC relevant to the patient population they serve. Methods: Using Kern's Model, we created and implemented a novel CC curriculum tailored to specific program needs in an emergency medicine residency program. Results: At the end of the curriculum, respondents reported having a better understanding of the importance of CC for their practice (p = 0.004) and of how a patient's personal and historical context affects treatment (p = 0.002). They also reported an increase in the frequency of practicing strategies to reduce bias in themselves (p < 0.001) and others (p < 0.001), as well as comfort interacting with and treating patients from different backgrounds (p < 0.001). Lastly, they reported improved preparedness to collaborate with communities to address HCD (p = 0.004) and to identify community leaders to do so (p < 0.001). Conclusions: The challenges of CC training demonstrate the need for a standard yet adaptable framework. We have designed, implemented, and evaluated a novel curriculum tailored to the specific needs of our EM residency program. The curriculum improved participants' attitudes, preparedness, and self-reported behaviors regarding CC and HCD. This framework represents an example of a successful model to meet ACGME requirements.

A Sports Practitioner's Perspective on the Return to Play During the Early Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons Learned and Next Steps.

With high profile events such as sporting and mass gathering events, recent history has revealed the importance of developing incident command structures to streamline communication, maximize coordination and establish contingencies. With the advent of COVID-19, a virus with significant human-to-human transmission and the potential for super-spreader events, there has been a brief universal cessation of sports, and the main question now is how to return to play in a way that keeps our athletes and general population healthy. This review aims to describe the core principles regarding return to play using a focus on incident command centers and disaster management. These principles include appropriate hygiene and social distancing, use of masks, rigorous monitoring and screening of symptoms, widespread testing, comprehensive contact tracing and considerations for travel and facilities. In addition, organizations need to have established scalable protocols for athletes who do contract the virus with symptom-based algorithms for length of time away from play and with screening for cardiac and pulmonary complications from COVID-19. Also, encouraging our athletes to become immunized against the virus and educating our athletes about nutrition and the relation to immune health is important as we return to play.