Belonging and Representation in Physiology Teaching

We teach in a discipline that should be agnostic to race, class, gender and ability, as we are literally in the work of learning about all bodies. Yet, so often we hold up one example and call it “normal.” By presenting images, using language and communicating an understanding that lacks representation we are committing a double failure. We uniquely have the opportunity to help raise awareness and ultimately contribute to a reduction in health care disparities by presenting more equitable and representative information to our students during their journey to become health care providers and researchers. Two, we have the ability to increase student beloning and reduce stereotype threat when we provide examples that include our students' identities. In this talk we will discuss some of the ways that representation and belonging can be addressed within undergraduate physiology curriculum. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.