A Faculty Development Graduate Medical Education Retreat to Teach and Address Social Determinants of Health

Abstract

Background: Social determinants of health (SDH) account for a large percentage of health outcomes. Therefore, ensuring providers can address SDH is paramount yet curricula in this area is limited. Aim: The authors aimed to raise awareness, identify learning opportunities, foster positive attitudes, and equip educators to implement SDH curriculum. Setting and participants: This retreat occurred at a large academic institution and had over 130 participants who represented 56 distinct training programs and over 20 disciplines. Program description: The retreat was titled “Social Determinants of Health: Walking in Your Patients’ Shoes.” The retreat was holistic and used a multidimensional approach that included traditional learning, team-based learning, reflective practice, and prompted action. Program evaluation: The evaluation of this retreat included electronic surveys and both qualitative and quantitative data. The retreat’s quality and effectiveness at improving participants’ knowledge and skill in addressing SDH was highly rated and resulted in numerous programs, including surgical and subspecialty programs reporting adopting SDH curricular and clinical workflow changes. Discussion: The retreat was successful and reached a wide and diverse set of faculty educators and can serve as an education model to the graduate medical education community on how to start to develop “physician-citizens.”