In July 2022, health professionals from across the U.S. gathered in Chicago for the annual Mayo Clinic RISE for Equity conference — an event that aims to advance equity, diversity and inclusion in health care. We caught up with some of the over 400 attendees to get a sense of why they came and what they were learning.
We asked: “What’s one action you plan to take in response to what you’re learning?”
Some were excited to share what they had learned with their teams back home.
“Oh, my God, all these slides — I want to take them to work and have everybody watch them. … I actually texted my manager last night. I said, ‘How can we get some of these slides in the meetings?'” — Elice Tiegs
“First thing is to just go back to the team and talk about everything that I’ve learned, and then have that discussion with my peers, my division chair and others and say, ‘Okay, what are the maybe three things that we can pick for this year that we can do?’ ” — Asif Hossain, M.S.
“There’s so much being done that I realized, ‘Wow. I never would have known this is happening.’ Amazing things are being done within the institution, but we don’t know. I think it’s worth sharing; it’s worth finding ways so that other people can know as well. … It’s an amazing work that will provide hope, but also it will provide perspective.” — Vincent Anani
The conference sparked specific action plans and questions for many attendees.
“Reevaluating my approach on pulling data, taking a step back and making sure I’m not making any assumptions that I shouldn’t be.” — Kyle Fox
“(The idea of) using the media, using what we’re seeing on TV versus making employees share their personal stories. As a department diversity leader, I facilitate diversity sessions with my colleagues. We were about to go into having them share their personal stories. And now when I go back, I’m going to switch it to using the media and making it broader. That way we can have a discussion and it won’t be so personal. Because I’ve been doing them now for over a year. … I was more transparent than I would have hoped to have to be. Just being authentic, but it was very draining.” — Quiana DeBrill
“‘If you want to have lifelong influence, find a gap and fill it.’ That was Dr. (Alyx) Porter who said that, and I just thought that was profound. … I was thinking about starting a group to help minority women get experience and get into leadership roles — a place where they could get advice. Because being an African American woman, when I’m looking for advice, I go to like, Google. I don’t know where to go. And there’s not a lot of people in my position to say, ‘Here’s how you respond to this. Here’s how you do this.’ So the other day I was just thinking, ‘Maybe you need to be that person that you’re seeking, because it doesn’t exist.’ So when she said that, I just thought, ‘Wow, that makes a lot of sense.’ ” — Shavogne Morgan, M.H.A.
Read more about what the attendees had to say:
