Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

The Department of Orthopaedic Surgery promotes and facilitates diversity, equity and inclusion across the Department’s core missions of clinical care, research, and teaching. The Department’s DEI Champion collaborates with JEDI-WeST and other stakeholders to create and promote a culture that embraces diversity, inclusion and anti-racism as a core value within the Department, ensuring that the Department’s goals of diversity, equity and inclusion embrace the strategic goals of the University’s broad definition of diversity.

Additional partners in this effort include the Office of Diversity & Inclusion, Associate Dean for Community Initiatives and other stakeholders to develop, strengthen and guide the diversity pipeline and community initiatives. The DEI Champion also works with the Department Chair, and Residency/Fellowship Program Directors to ensure that concepts of race, racism, antiracism, and cultural competency are infused into trainee curriculum and continuing medical education, including journal clubs and grand rounds topics. This includes ensuring all faculty, trainees and staff participate in unconscious bias training, and conducting and implementing such trainings as appropriate.

The Department of Orthopaedic Surgery makes every effort to ensure the broadest applicant pools, attracting the most qualified diverse candidates for all positions. This includes faculty, residents, fellows and staff. Faculty positions are advertised on specialty related professional journals or websites as well as on the Ruth Jackson Orthopaedic Society website, an organization that promotes the development of women in Orthopaedic Surgery, and the J Robert Gladden Orthopaedic Society, a multicultural organization.

Expanding the opportunities in education for the future is an important goal. In this effort, the Department has undertaken a number of programs. Beginning in 2017, the Department established a program working with the Nth Dimension where URM medical students spend a summer after the first year of medical school seeing patients and doing research in the Department. In July, 2020, the Department started a Sub internship Scholarship program in support of URM 4th year students. Beginning in 2018, the Department established a Research Lab Experience program for URM 3rd year medical students to spend a year in the Chair’s lab doing research.

All of these efforts are in keeping with the goals of the Keck School of Medicine. For additional information on the medical school programs, please visit: Office of Diversity and Inclusion

Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer for the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
(DEI Champion)

Juliann Kwak Lee, M.D.
Clinical Associate Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery (Clinician Educator)