Critical Data Literacy: Addressing Race as a Variable in a Preclinical Medical Education Session

Authors

Stacy Brody, George Washington UniversityFollow
Susan Koenig, George Washington UniversityFollow

Document Type

Poster

Keywords

Data Literacy; Race; Preclinical Medical Education

Publication Date

Spring 2021

Abstract

At the Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library, librarians conduct instruction sessions on various aspects of evidencebased medicine for first- and second-year medical students. One of these sessions, the Chest Pain Formative Observed Simulated Clinical Experience (FOSCE), introduces the Framingham Study, later cohort studies, and the Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease (ASCVD) Risk Calculator to first-year medical students. This calculator includes race as an input and over or underestimates risk for certain groups. This session previously mentioned the need to diversify study populations and described the evolution of the algorithm, but it did not highlight these as critical issues for discussion. Beyond noting this discrepancy and moving on, Himmelfarb librarians saw an opportunity to introduce critical data literacy concepts and examine the use of race as a variable in clinical algorithms.

Open Access

1

Comments

Presented virtually at the 2021 Medical Library Association Annual Conference, May 2021.