News

Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Today, we honor the extraordinary life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., born on January 15, 1929, in his family’s home in Georgia. Dr. King was the second of three children, the son of a preacher, a Black man who changed our course and began a new story, one that is still being written today.  

As we consider Dr. King’s life in the context of this moment in PAEA’s history – celebrating 50 years, preparing to launch a new strategic plan, and supporting our member programs through significant challenges and changes – we honor our past and look to our future. As a profession, we have made progress toward creating a diverse and equitable health professions education system, but we are not where we hope to be. In the next 50 years, our intention is clear: to empower our members to transform higher graduate medical education environments through justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI).

Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. This horrific action aimed to silence him, yet Dr. King’s voice continues to ring out, reminding our nation and world of the sting of conviction, the threat of injustice, the urgency of the moment, and the strength of hope. 

Introducing the PAEA Vignette Project

In honor of Dr. King’s legacy, we are announcing a new project created by Dr. Monica Miles, PAEA’s chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer, and Shani Fleming, MSHS, MPH, PA-C, associate professor and chief equity, diversity, and inclusion officer at the University of Maryland Baltimore PA program. The Vignette project shares stories exploring the experiences of underrepresented in medicine faculty and their allies. From your shared stories, PAEA will be able to provide a valuable resource to help us all understand the experiences of URiM faculty while facilitating critical conversations.

Vignettes are short, descriptive stories of an incident within a PA program that provides leadership and faculty with examples of injustices that URiM faculty face (i.e., microaggressions, lower student evaluations, just to name a few). This project comes on the heels of the powerful DEI webinar series facilitated by the DIMAC. They used a skit to convey everyday challenges when advancing equity conversations within the admissions process.

Learn more about the project on our Member Stories page, and share your story with us here.