Illustrating Representation: Diversity and Inclusion within MD Curriculum-based Medical Illustration

This medical student project sought to determine the current state of skin-tone representation in medical illustration of the human body in a U.S. medical school’s MD curriculum and thereafter to begin addressing determined discrepancies in such representation. After quantitatively analyzing curricular resources assigned to medical students, the curriculum resources’ medical illustrations were determined to be not reflective of the U.S. national averages of skin tones (1-2). The Chi-squared value of this comparison was 6697.719 with 5 degrees of freedom, producing a two-tailed p-value of < 0.0001. As a result of this finding, twelve diversity-inclusive images were created by a medical student artist to replace existing illustrations in order to make assigned curricular resources more representative of the U.S. population. The new images are inclusive as to skin tone, body habitus, age, gender, and disability. Beyond addressing the extremely statistically significant findings, these images include components of narrative medicine to address the hidden curriculum and implicit biases that are communicated through current representations of the “default” patient. The new illustrations challenge this current “default,” historically imaged as an able-bodied, white, young, healthy man. In collaboration with professors teaching in the preclinical curriculum, the new images are now included in the medical school’s required curriculum. The images will be shown as part of this presentation.