A big, congratulatory race equity tip-of-the-hat goes out to the UC Davis Health System and its administrators who, in response to learning about the pernicious consequences of unconscious bias for people belonging to negatively stereotyped groups, have implemented a race-conscious approach to staff recruitment and selection.   The process by which UC Davis came to adopt these changes is recounted in the Oct./Nov. 2010 issue of the UC Davis Health System faculty newsletter and is a two-page article well worth a read.  In response to an unconscious bias training from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) that introduced him to the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and the work of Pr. Brian Nosek of Project Implicit, Ed Callahan, UC Davis associate dean for academic personnel and professor of family and community medicine, states, “The research makes it clear that we can be influenced by unconscious biases even though we feel strongly committed to be objective. If we acknowledge the reality of unconscious bias, we can look more closely at our  own judgments and challenge ourselves more carefully as we review applications for positions here [at UC Davis].”  Specifically, UC Davis has changed the composition of its search committee for open staff positions to increase the number of women and people underrepresented in the field of medicine and encouraged all administrators to take the IAT, learn more about unconscious bias, and take steps to raise race and gender stereotypes to the conscious level when making important decisions, including hiring decisions.

For an impressive list of articles on the origins of unconscious bias and its impact on women and racial minorities in medicine and engineering, see the following link on the website for the Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (WISELI): http://wiseli.engr.wisc.edu/subject.php#bias.