Einstein Education Researcher Selected as Macy Faculty Scholar

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Jun 27, 2016, 10:25 ET

BRONX, N.Y., June 27, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Cristina Gonzalez, M.D., M.Ed. , associate professor of clinical medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and attending physician at Montefiore, has been selected as a 2016 Macy Faculty Scholar. One of only five chosen nationally, Dr. Gonzalez will receive a $100,000 grant from the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation to allow her to pursue her medical education research and curriculum development.

"I am honored to have been selected by Macy and to become a part of the growing community of health profession educators," said Dr. Gonzalez. "My incredible support system at Einstein and Montefiore has encouraged me to pursue my interests and I am particularly excited to help develop new approaches to curriculum development that will improve medical education, and ultimately, the practice of medicine by our students."

For her Macy project, Dr. Gonzalez will design, implement and rigorously evaluate a curriculum for teaching medical students how to recognize and manage their implicit biases—the unconscious and unintentional assumptions we all make about each other. These feelings and attitudes may be based on race, gender, age, sexual orientation, appearance and socio-economic status. Studies have shown that implicit bias can potentially impair clinical care and patient outcomes, so it has been targeted for interventions aimed at reducing health disparities.

Dr. Gonzalez's position as a hospitalist in the division of hospital medicine at Montefiore has helped inform her education research. She says her clinical role has taught her that doctors must become aware of their subconscious biases so they can overcome them and be able to advocate for their patients on a regular basis.

"Dr. Gonzalez's initiative to teach future doctors how to improve the health of vulnerable and marginalized populations exemplifies the educational change we need to meet the public's changing health care needs," said George Thibault, M.D., president of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation.

Dr. Gonzalez will build on her ongoing research in the field. Last year, she published a study evaluating the impact of the class she taught on health disparities, aimed at helping medical students identify and develop strategies to manage their implicit bias. Her work in this area has also been funded by the Amos Medical Faculty Development Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation–making her only the second education researcher chosen as a Scholar in that program's 30 year history.

About Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Albert Einstein College of Medicine is one of the nation's premier centers for research, medical education and clinical investigation. During the 2015-2016 academic year, Einstein is home to 731 M.D. students, 193 Ph.D. students, 106 students in the combined M.D./Ph.D. program , and 278 postdoctoral research fellows. The College of Medicine has more than 1,900 full-time faculty members located on the main campus and at its clinical affiliates. In 2015, Einstein received $148 million in awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This includes the funding of major research centers at Einstein in aging, intellectual development disorders, diabetes, cancer, clinical and translational research, liver disease, and AIDS. Other areas where the College of Medicine is concentrating its efforts include developmental brain research, neuroscience, cardiac disease, and initiatives to reduce and eliminate ethnic and racial health disparities. Its partnership with Montefiore Medical Center, the University Hospital and academic medical center for Einstein, advances clinical and translational research to accelerate the pace at which new discoveries become the treatments and therapies that benefit patients. Through its extensive affiliation network involving Montefiore, Jacobi Medical Center—Einstein's founding hospital, and three other hospital systems in the Bronx, Brooklyn and on Long Island, Einstein runs one of the largest residency and fellowship training programs in the medical and dental professions in the United States. For more information, please visit www.einstein.yu.edu, read our blog, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and view us on YouTube.