(66) Health Professional Student Perspectives of an Interprofessional Education (IPE) Event on Health Equity

Objective : To evaluate health professional student perspectives on an IPE event focusing on health equity.

Methods: Students from various healthcare programs attended a Color of Care documentary event focusing on health equity. Small group discussions transpired. Not all disciplines were required to attend. Using Qualtrics, students completed a post-event survey. Paired t-test and descriptive analysis were utilized. Questions included event takeaways, student definition of equity, whether the event is recommended to future learners, and pre/post self-reflection utilizing a 5-point Likert-scale (strongly disagree=1, somewhat disagree=2, neither agree nor disagree =3, somewhat agree=4, strongly agree=5).

Results: Over 9 sessions from January 2023 to February 2024, more than 1,100 students were invited to participate. Out of the 688 students who completed the survey, 659 (98.7%) students recommended the event, with 478 (71.6%) recommending required attendance, and 181 (27.1%) recommending optional attendance. After participation, students were significantly more likely to 1) feel empowered to take action on injustices within healthcare and 2) be aware on how to call out inequity and health disparities (p < 0.0001). Students agreed this event allowed them to actively listen and encourage ideas and opinions of others and allowed them to identify ways to problem-solve and discuss strategies to improve access to healthcare, 4.42/5 and 4.32/5 on a 5-point scale, respectively.

Conclusions: Quintuple aim of IPE focuses on improved health equity as one of the five outcomes resulting from interprofessional competency. Based on positive results, this event will serve as an introductory IPE event related to health equity. Students from many health disciplines at different years within their programs attended. Data will be further evaluated to determine whether it should be required for all healthcare disciplines within the university.