Restorative Decolonized Mindfulness (RDM) (Gaynor and Murthi) provides mindfulness education to address multifactorial determinants of health inequity. RDM trains medical students to increase cultural competencies by integrating historical, cultural, and social determinants of health and healing. Students examine disparities emanating from structural, state, and identity-based policies and practices that impact patient health. RDM focuses on cultivating self, social and systemic mindfulness to identify health correlates of cultural stress, pain, illness, and systemic traumas (anti-Black racism, transphobia etc). Mindfulness based health programs often minimize the import of social disparities in the etiology of pain and illness. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach and pre and post measures of cultural competency, cultural and racial attitudes, cultural communication and behaviors, and clinical decision making to test preliminary outcomes, RDM will be implemented with 25-30 medical students  to assess the feasibility and acceptability of a decolonized curriculum to build capacity for culturally competent care, compassionate therapeutic relationships, and collective healing for medical students, patients, and the communities they serve.

Names:

Meera Murthi, Ph.D (Osher Center of Integrative Health, Univeristy of Cincinnati)

Dr. Sian Cotton Ph.D (Director, Osher Center of Integrative Health, Univeristy of Cincinnati)

Tia Sheree Gaynor Ph.D (Associate Professor, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota) (RDM Co-developer)

Estimated Budget Request: $20,000-25,000.