The UC Davis curriculum, along with one from New York University, was announced last month at the AADPRT Annual Meeting in Orlando, Fla. The curricula were among a total of eleven submissions from throughout the United States and Canada.
Russell F. Lim, associate clinical professor, submitted the UC Davis curriculum. Other authors from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences faculty are Alan K. Koike, David M. Gellerman, Andreea Seritan, Mark Servis and Francis G. Lu.
The AADPRT's Model Curriculum Committee peer-reviewed the submissions using the following criteria: goals, objectives, instructional methods, teaching resources (including bibliography), instructor preparation, expectations of learners, evaluation methods and creativity/innovation. The AADPRT hopes that the submissions will not only be of immediate usefulness to psychiatry training directors and faculty, but also serve to enhance the academic portfolios of course directors whose curricula are vetted by the committee and selected as model curricula.
The authors believe that the success of the UC Davis cultural psychiatry curriculum has been due to three factors:
- A critical mass of committed ethnic minority faculty
- A supportive administration
- A diverse patient population
The Diversity Advisory Committee (DAC) was founded in 1999 by Lim, its current chair, to address and develop diversity within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. The goals of DAC are to improve instruction in cultural competence in graduate and undergraduate medical education; improve services for ethnic minority patients by recruiting minority medical students, residents, and faculty; and to encourage scholarly work.
The DAC also has supported the development of a four-year Religion and Spirituality curriculum for the general psychiatry residency program, which received a Templeton Foundation Curricular Award in 2003 as part of its four-year Cultural Psychiatry curriculum. The American College of Psychiatrists awarded its Creativity in Psychiatric Education Award in 2007 to the department in recognition of its Diversity Advisory Committee.
The UC Davis School of Medicine is among the nation's leading medical schools, recognized for its specialty- and primary-care programs. The school offers fully accredited master's degree programs in public health and in informatics, and its combined M.D.-Ph.D. program is training the next generation of physician-scientists to conduct high-impact research and translate discoveries into better clinical care. Along with being a recognized leader in medical research, the school is committed to serving underserved communities and advancing rural health.