“How Physicians Can Heal Society: Diversity Week 2017 at the College of Medicine” – Written for NSM October 2017 .

The University of Central Florida’s College of Medicine reaches the end of their Diversity Week schedule today, October 19.
On what’s the fourth consecutive day of diversity focused public speaking in the College of Medicine, Medical students along with faculty from the medical college’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion will set up tables and enter the crowd to talk with anyone who had more questions. This provides networking opportunities, adding that final touch and capping off another successful Diversity Week at UCF.
The seminars were organized by the UCF College of Medicine’s new interim Assistant Dean for Diversity and Inclusion, Saleh M. M. Rahman, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H. Leading up to this, in July 2016 Rahman was hired as a professor of medicine for UCF, his latest professorship since educating at both FAMU and FSU separately.
On October 16, Rahman and the College of Medicine began a series of consecutive day-by-day public speaking events with a keynote presentation from Carol Moseley Braun, the first African American woman to serve in the U.S. senate. Rahman strives to inspire inclusion in the medical world, the hopeful end result of a program designed to help listeners adopt new inclusive and tolerate behavior in healthcare, a field quite reliant on the humanity of its students.
The next day, October 17, a discussion on gender and sexual disparities in medicine was led by Stephany Mahaffey, M.S. Ph.D., a local Psychologist who specializes in working with gender and sexual minorities. She discussed “Authentic Life Transitions,” which focused on transgender therapies and disparities.
On Wednesday October 18, panelists at the College of Medicine discussed how physicians can cope professionally to hostility in the patient-provider relationship, sharing personal experiences. Speaking was John M Tramont M.D., Caridad Hernandez M.D., Shazia Bég M.D., and Sergio Salazar M.D. The panel was moderated by Katherine Daly, Ph.D., and led by Rahman.
“You could see how a faculty member or physician is facing discrimination because of the way that she’s looking, because she’s wearing a hijab for example,” Rahman said. “Even looking like a Puerto Rican, some patient says “I just hate Puerto Ricans,” and you see that this kind of practical situation happens, so we need more diversity.”
Dr. Rahman has been researching diversity in terms of health disparity and minority health for the last 16 years. He is known primarily for his work researching cancer prevention.
In an example he discussed of research done during the last five years, Rahman focused on a local breast cancer and cervical cancer treatment program in Tallahassee, FL. The minimum age to participate in this program was 50, but Rahman noticed something strange among approaching applicants.
“In African Americans, they developed cancer much earlier than 50 years old,” Rahman recalls. He was screening African American victims of breast cancer as young as 30 years old.
These participants were not old enough to participate in the treatment program, so Rahman and his team provided free screening although they did not have the means to follow up with treatment. Rahman described how those on Medicare or Medicaid or nothing at all could be made to wait: “it can take up to 12 months, up to 9 months, up to 8 months, up to 30 months to get a diagnostic resolution. By that time, the cancer has spread.”
Rahman began searching for reasons. Many pass it off as a genetic issue, Rahman says, but he disagrees:
“I was always against that notion because we can, from the preventative medicine or public viewpoint, we can actually show that there are other factors more critical, this is health disparity.”
In January 2008, Rahman was getting closer to his answer. He published a study testing the hypothesis that hypertension risk in African Americans is directly related to their perceptions of racism among their communities. Rahman explained how serious health problems can appear in minorities who worry about where they live:
“If [a minority] has a perception about [their] discrimination, perception would be a reality for that person. Say, if I perceive that somebody is discriminating me — even if it is not true, still I perceive it. It’s causing stress and creates hormones in my body, and that creates hypertension.”
With his social responsibilities in the field of cancer prevention, Rahman knew that being aware of the causes of hypertension, cancer, and early death in African Americans and other minorities as caused by racism was useful, malleable information. Rahman realized that the key to helping these people was out there, and he saw that it was diversity.
“If we don’t have diversity and inclusion, we have more sense of disconnection, and that’s a stressor,” Rahman said. “Stressors cause the creation of hormones like cortisone that increase hypertension, or other things, so diversity and inclusiveness actually create an environment for healthy lifestyles.”
In accepting his position within the College of Medicine’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion and directing their facet of Diversity Week 2017, Rahman seeks to make the world a healthier place with diversity.
“Diversity and inclusion brings more social networks, social support, and better health outcome,” Rahman stated. “So, in every possible way, this is my philosophy, agenda, and mission – I not only believe from a health viewpoint, but also philosophy, that humanity should be treated in the same way.”
UCF recently qualified to become a Hispanic Serving Institution, registering 25% of the University’s 60,000+ students as Hispanic or Latino. This special status would give many students and staff the opportunity to pursue new grants to develop social projects for example, but Rahman is excited to see even more progress.
“I can see the beauty of culture and humanity, and as a medical scientist I see that people are not different. We are not different biologically, we are different culturally, and that’s why diversity and inclusion is so critical to understand,” Rahman implores.
“Anybody who wants to be a good physician, good doctor, good human, I would say ‘become a diverse person.'”