Academic Medicine Open Forum

2020 has certainly been a year of change and reflection for all of us, as individuals, as organizations, and as a broad academic medicine community. As we look forward to 2021-onward, together-what collective goals or resolutions should be considered?

What should be on our academic medicine community's shared New Year's resolutions list?

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Stephanie Weiner
Director, Digital Strategy & Engagement
Association of American Medical Colleges
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In 2021, I hope:

1. That we will continue to employ changes that we adopted during the pandemic for the longer term in our approaches to education, research, health care, and community collaborations if they are moving us in the direction of better service to our learners,  patients, families, and communities.
2. That we will look even more deeply and honestly into the mirror to discern our biases and learn to be more inclusive leaders.

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David Skorton
President/CEO
Association of American Medical Colleges
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My two to add to the list.

• That we sustain and not lose the collective spirit, intentionality and drive we attained in 2020 to address and dismantle systemic racism in medicine and health care - that we find 'good trouble' to effect change.
• We must never forget that respecting all humanity is at the core of what we do and what we stand for as health professionals and should not tolerate any actions (like we witnessed in 2020) that dehumanize and cause undue burden of suffering on people... especially children.  

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David Acosta
Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer
Association of American Medical Colleges
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A couple of resolutions…

1. COVID-19 has pointed out the challenges we as a society have created for women who want to pursue a research career.  Many institutions have addressed this problem creatively, and I hope those good ideas take root and spread.
2. We have seen the amazing power of our research and development engine within academic medicine. A novel coronavirus was first uncovered in January and by December a collaboration of academic medical centers, the NIH, and industry had enrolled tens of thousands of volunteers into clinical trials to test a vaccine built on more than 20 years of academic basic research.  Even better, the vaccine looks like it will be effective to prevent COVID.  My hope is that we continue to see constructive collaborations between institutions, the NIH, and industry because there are other big problems to solve.
3. COVID has pointed out again how racial, ethnic, and economic inequities in our society have created health inequities as well.  Made aware, we should do something about it.  

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Ross McKinney, MD
Chief Scientific Officer
Association of American Medical Colleges
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