Welcome. The American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy appreciates your participation in this discussion. We all have a scope in this together, advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in GI. My name is Eden Essex, and I will be the announcer for this presentation. Before we get started, just a few housekeeping items. Currently, you're in the auditorium of our virtual environment. When you enter the lobby, you may have noted seeing a meeting information banner. In there, you will find the agenda for this session. Via the resource room, you can access GI Leap, where a recording of this session will be posted in the coming weeks. If you have questions about the virtual environment, swipe your virtual badge, and a representative will get in touch with you. The features of our virtual environment are available to you during and anytime following the event. At the close of the presentation, there will be a question and answer session with our panelists. Questions can be submitted at any time via the Q&A function. Now it is my pleasure to introduce our moderator for this evening. Dr. Victoria Gomez is an associate professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science and a consultant for the division of gastroenterology and hepatology at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. She is also a member of the ASGE Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. I will now hand the presentation over to Dr. Gomez. Thank you so much, Eden, and thank you to everyone at the ASGE. It's my pleasure to serve as your moderator this evening as we address this very important topic of diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, in the field of gastroenterology. ASGE recognizes and values the importance of embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion and its impact on strengthening our organization and our members' ability to provide excellent care to all patient populations. This evening, ASGE leadership and volunteers will be addressing its plans around the issue of diversity, equity, and inclusion and will highlight some of the initiatives underway at ASGE. Let's get started. Without further ado, let's welcome our ASGE president, Dr. Doug Rex. Dr. Rex is a distinguished professor of medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine, Chancellor's Professor at Indiana University, Purdue University, Indianapolis, and Director of Endoscopy at Indiana University Hospital in Indianapolis. Dr. Rex, the floor is yours. Thanks so much, Dr. Gomez, and thanks to all of you who are listening and watching this evening at work or home. We really appreciate your joining us for this very important topic and conversation. We all have a scope in this together, which is a great title because it merges our value in DEI with our common interest in endoscopy. So, 12 months ago, the very unsettling times in which we found ourselves as a nation compelled ASGE leadership to evaluate our current efforts in diversity, equity, and inclusion. First, we looked inward to our membership to ensure that we're cultivating an organization in which all of our members feel valued and have access to opportunities to be involved at every level of the organization and during every stage of their career and on every career path, regardless of gender, age, racial, ethnic group, sexual orientation, or geographical location. Next, we looked externally to our patients to begin a discussion regarding how we can help to ensure our members' ability to provide excellent care to all patient populations. The diversity, equity, and inclusion or DEI value proposition aligns directly with the values and mission of ASGE. We've made a commitment to elevate DEI as a priority of the society and to create a platform that sustains our efforts long term in our organization and our profession. Our work will be strategic, intentional, continual, and accountable. Tonight, you're going to learn about our Action Plan to Advance Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Gastroenterology. Approved by the governing board in February, the development of this plan was spearheaded by the Diversity and Inclusion Committee with input from committees across the society. This five-year Action Plan is being implemented society-wide by ASGE boards, committees, task forces, and staff into our publications and our programming. It'll be a bright, vibrant thread in the tapestry of all that ASGE is and all that ASGE undertakes. Five guiding principles create the framework for our expected behavior and decision-making on this journey. We promise that our approach to DEI will be, number one, inclusive as we actively value and embrace our differences for the benefit of the mission of ASGE. Second, united as we're collaborative as well as supportive in service to our patients and colleagues. Third, transparent as we are honest and clear about our goals, processes, and outcomes. Fourth, active as we advocate for equity in professional advancement, legislation, and patient care. And fifth, adaptable as we are resilient, flexible, and ready to adjust as the moment dictates. Thanks again so much for joining us on this journey and for participating tonight in this program. We look forward to your feedback and questions. Thank you so much, Doug. It is great to know ASGE's long-term commitment to being intentional about its efforts in DEI to ensure that it is sustained as a key thread in the fabric of ASGE and its initiatives to advance DEI in the profession. To provide details on ASGE's Action Plan, it is my distinct pleasure to introduce Dr. Jennifer Christie. Dr. Christie is a Professor of Medicine at Emory Clinic, Clinical Director in the Division of Digestive Diseases, and Executive Associate Division Director. She is also Medical Director of the GI Endoscopy Ambulatory Surgery Center for the Emory Clinic. Dr. Christie currently serves as ASGE Vice President and is the Chair of the ASGE Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Jennifer, the audience is yours. Thank you so much, Victoria, and thank you, Doug, for that wonderful introduction. And I am just really excited to be a part of this discussion tonight. The critical word in the title of our plan is Action, ASGE Action Plan to Advance DEI and Inclusion in Gastroenterology. Everything that I'll outline in the next few minutes really requires a society-wide action. And I'm just so grateful to be a part of this engaged group to take actions to enhance DEI within ASGE, GI, amongst our colleagues, and certainly for our patients. So, as Doug mentioned, we have our five guiding principles that he just outlined so well. And under those principles are our five priorities or strategies which we will focus on over the next five years. And importantly, we will assess our progress in all of these initiatives annually. And some will be at three years, and then certainly at five years we'll do an assessment of our progress along these initiatives. And we're going to create a dashboard that we will share with the Governing Board every year in which to receive feedback on perhaps gaps and other opportunities we may have to advance DEI. And certainly, as we start the discussion with the group here tonight, we really welcome the feedback from all of our members. So, the first strategy or priority is to increase diversity and inclusion across ASGE. So, at the board level, committees, as well as committee leadership, task force, it will be integrated in our educational program, our postgraduate courses in some form or fashion, in terms of awards and nominations, and then also in our editorial work, which Jennifer Lightdale will talk about as we move along. We know that we have to be intentional about making volunteer appointments from individuals from all backgrounds, genders. We need more women in leadership, as well as on committees and NGI in general. And then also, really focusing on members of our LGBTQ community to make sure that we are engaged as far as issues that that community may face, as well as their patients. Also, importantly, we want to institute programs to enhance coaching and mentorship. And Bob will talk about the mentorship program that the Member Engagement Committee spearheaded this year. And this is going to be key in terms of grooming and giving women and other members from underrepresented groups opportunities for involvement and leadership. And also, we'll continue to move forward opportunities such as the LEAD program, which is a year program that helps to enhance leadership skills and opportunities for our female gastroenterologists. The second initiative or priority is to make sure we promote diversity in the healthcare workforce pipeline. So our goal is to get the word out about careers in healthcare in general for folks who are typically underrepresented in medicine, but of course, specifically as it relates to gastroenterology, because of course, you know, that's, you know, one of the best fields to get into. So, and that really is going to involve us digging down deep into the pipeline. So bringing out strategies to engage in, in trainees and also students, perhaps even at the college level. Also, this, this is going to involve some collaboration with our sister societies to move this, this forward, because again, we have to dig deep into our pipeline to make sure we produce a workforce that represents the patients in which we serve. The third priority or strategy is to promote equity and protection in the workplace, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or disability status. And so something that I believe Luke will talk about is perhaps creating some resources or tools for, for GI practices so that they can help create strategies that focus on DEI in their practice to make sure that, that the issues as it relates to healthcare providers, as well as the staff are, are addressed and that everyone within that practice or that organization feels, feels valued and heard. The fourth priority or initiative is to expand healthcare equity and access to GI care. So one of the things that Dr. Gomez at Victoria will talk about is this new research award that we worked with the chair of the research committee, as well as others within the committee to develop this new research award. And we'll continue to work with them to execute and roll out this, this award for work that relates to healthcare disparities. We're also working on programs, potentially to partner with, with industry partners to, to make sure we reach out to the community to educate and enhance colorectal cancer screening in communities that are typically underscreened. So, so those things are in the works. The other thing, which I think has really been really cool and exciting is the advocate. We, the most recent or the, the, one of the recent episodes was number one discussion around women in, in GI and women in ASG, but also there was a really great episode around LBGTQ providers, as well as patients and issues that, that they may face and how we can potentially begin to address those, those issues. And the last priority that we have articulated is to try to continue to expand a culturally sensitive, as well as diverse healthcare workforce that is well prepared to deliver the best care to all patients. And so things that we've started to do is, you know, webinars around implicit bias. We're going to do some additional webinars on things like bystander training and being a good ally and, and, and things of that nature. And again, we want to make sure that, that people feel comfortable to have this open dialogue with each other and continue to learn from one another. So again, we're going to keep this conversation going, look forward to hearing from, from everyone on this call who is participating and furthering this discussion as we progress along this journey. Thank you, Victoria. Thank you, Jennifer. Well, as Jennifer highlighted, we are six months into our committees starting to develop initiatives to advance ASGE priorities and DEI. There's so much to be done and we want to hear your ideas and feedback. Before we move to the question and answer portion of the webinar, today we have a panel of ASGE volunteer leaders heading up key committees and task forces who will share some of the work underway by the society. I will kick off the panel discussion by updating you on the ASGE's new diversity and inclusion research award. As you may have heard, one of the action plan priorities is to expand healthcare equity and access to GI care. One of the strategies for us to meet this priority is for ASGE to support research and the career development of GI researchers in the area of health disparities. To kick off the society's efforts, ASGE developed an annual $50,000 diversity and inclusion award. The objective of this award is to promote studies that advance the field of gastroenterology research and focus on minority health as well as healthcare disparities as it relates to GI disease. This award will be included in ASGE's current research award cycle and the deadline to apply for this award is December 10th. We have included the announcement in the resource room. We hope that this award will assist the awardee in securing additional funds to advance research focused on minority health and GI. I'm happy to take questions as well during the Q&A component of the webinar. So now I would like to hand the presentation off to Dr. Luke John Day, chair of the quality assurance and endoscopy committee. Dr. Day is professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco and is the chief medical officer at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Luke, what is the quality committee up to? Thank you, Victoria. Good evening, everyone. I'd like to first begin by thanking Dr. Christie, the entire diversity equity and inclusion committee as well as the ASGE governing board for taking on and leading this important and critical work for ASGE and our field of GI. Over the last several months, the quality committee has undertaken several initiatives related to diversity, equity, and inclusion and as it pertains to quality improvement. I'd like to highlight just some of our early work that we've just begun to implement. I'd first like to take this opportunity to thank Drs. Anna Deloy and Raquel Shempey for taking the lead on really thinking about how our committee should really incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion into all of our quality improvement work and really has developed a comprehensive and robust plan for our committee for the next several months. I just want to highlight a couple of examples of things that we're currently in the process of working on or plan to work on over the next couple of months. First, we are dedicating and working on having diversity, equity, and inclusion quality improvement talks within our educational programs, really talking about the importance of having a diverse and equitable workplace, but also weaving DEI as a thread in our existing talks, so really examining things such as optimizing bowel prep and urinoscopy unit and really looking at it through the lens of DEI. These will be embedded in all of our quality improvement educational courses. We've also produced a video tip in our April issue of practical solutions, really addressing questions about the importance and the benefits of having workplace diversity. We initiated a collaboration with our publications community at ASGE to explore developing patient education materials that enhance equitable care. We're now in the process of developing a toolkit for health care teams to implement the optimal ergonomic practices with respect to equity and inclusion. We're also partnering with the diversity, equity, and inclusion committee to look at its annual award to see if there's an opportunity to integrate a quality improvement board into it. And then finally, we discuss incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion into our endoscopy unit recognition program application process. While there are plans to conduct a town hall within the next couple of weeks with our EURP units to gather their feedback on incorporating DEI into the EURP application process, our current thinking is to really encourage DEI-focused QI initiatives to fulfill the performance improvement project requirement of the application. Examples of this that we're considering might include evaluating adenoma detection rates by patient race and gender, evaluating bowel prep scores in elderly patients or non-English speaking patients, or assessing practice performance in colorectal cancer screening in minority populations across one's practice. All of these initiatives are just the tip of the iceberg for our committee, and we look forward to partnering and collaborating with other committees and the ASGE membership on this important and critical work. Thank you so much, Luke. Now, I would like to bring in Dr. Jennifer Lightdale, who chairs our GIE editorial board. Dr. Lightdale is a professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts. She also serves as chief of the pediatric gastroenterology and chief quality officer for Children's UMass Medical Center. Jennifer, the audience is yours. Thanks, Victoria, and thank you to you and Dr. Christie and to everyone at ASGE for inviting me to share an initiative that the ASGE editorial board has really been excited to champion this year. The initiative was actually suggested by the senior manager of clinical publications at ASGE, Deborah Bowman, and we owe her great thanks. In short, her suggestion really makes ASGE and our flagship journal, Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, on the cutting edge of increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in medical public publications and medical journal publications. I'll talk about it because any of you who are going to submit to GIE will be wondering what you're experiencing as you do this. First, let me just introduce Deborah because, to me, she's extraordinary. I had the privilege of being an associate editor for GIE about 10 years ago, and I got to know Deborah in that process, and now I'm chairing this editorial board and working with her again. She's truly a hidden gem at ASGE and has been so for the past 16 years. Debra really knows what she's doing, and that's in part because before ASGE, she worked actually in St. Louis for Elsevier, who's our publisher, but also because she's incredibly professionally networked among other managing editors for medical journals. And I think this really helped her keep on the pulse on what's happening in medical publishing and actually helps GIE really stay in just in the mix and understanding what's going on. And a lot of what Debra has done has been participating and leading in the International Society for Managing and Technical Editors, or ISTME, and she's served as their newsletter editor and their society secretary. Actually, currently she's chair of the Ethics Committee, so that also really helps us. But in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion, as Debra tells it, she has been aware that this has been a discussion among medical publishers, and she actually follows a blog for medical publishers that I don't follow, but thankfully she does, called The Scholarly Kitchen. And over the winter, she read a piece where colleagues at Cell Press were describing an initiative to encourage statements of information by authors about their efforts to consider diversity, equity, and inclusion as they're submitting their publications, and preferably before, frankly, and we'll talk about that. But the Cell Press folks in that blog actually said that if anybody was interested, they'd be happy to talk to them, and thankfully Debra took them up on this offer and was able to bring back to us the concept of having all authors submitting to GIE include a form that explains how their research considered diversity, equity, and inclusion in all aspects of the study and the paper. So the form basically is a checkbox form, and specifically authors are asked how they thought about inclusion and diversity in terms of scientific content. So a little bit of the form asks about human subject recruitment, whether there's sex balance, whether they've thought about race, and also even if you've got non-human subjects, whether you've thought about sex balance. And then also it really gets into authorship and whether you've thought about inclusion and diversity in authorship and attribution, and whether authors self-identify as underrepresented minorities or having disabilities or LGBTQ. And then it even moves forward into asking if there's active thought to ensuring gender balance in citing references. And at the end of this form, which takes just a few minutes to fill out, you're asked if you want to publish a diversity, equity, and inclusion statement as part of your article. And if you say, yes, you'd be interested, you have to verify that all authors on the paper have agreed to inclusion of the statement. So, I mean, it's new and it sounds different, but it's actually quite easy to do. And I think we thought about it and people were very enthusiastic, frankly, for all the reasons I think that many of us are totally engaging and actively trying to figure out what we can do. It's an opt-out approach. So basically when you go to submit to GIE, you're asked to pull up this form. And the very first question asked, do you want to publish your information about diversity? And if you say no, you opt out. But if you opt in, you're filling out this form in this very checkbox way. And I think what we're hoping is either way, just encountering this form is actually going to be educational for us as investigators, because it really makes you think, did I think about this going in? And from my perspective, it's a little bit like when we first really got formal about discussing conflicts of interest, maybe 20 years ago, where it was sort of was something you thought, oh, of course I do this. But as we really started to nail down, well, what do we mean by conflicts of interest and have you truly disclosed them? That's opened our eyes to what can be conflicts of interest. So hopefully this is really going to open people's eyes to how they need to be thinking about diversity, equity, and inclusion as they go to do research, not just at the last minute as they're going to submit the paper. But I think it gets us on the cutting edge of things without a doubt. Really just to tell you briefly, I think to put this forward, Deborah brought this up, frankly, when I came back from one of the chair's committees and said, okay, how are we gonna think about diversity, equity, and inclusion? And it was discussed at the editorial board meeting and of course with the chief editor, Mike Wallace, who brought it back to his associate editors. And then I think to be sensitive and make sure that this form could be acceptable because we have such an international submission group and we wanna make sure that the pool of authors who are looking to submit to us would understand to be open to this form. We sent it out to our international editorial board and there was really universal and worldwide excitement. And the form actually was implemented in editorial manager as of mid-April. And I'll just end by saying, the cell press people, when Deborah talked to them and sort of looked at what they were doing and then made a form for us, were cautious and told her to be cautious. She said, people may simply all opt out, all authors may opt out, but it's actually quite exciting as of today, since mid-April and here we are July, whatever we are on, July 8th, we've had 120 submissions that have opted in. And of those 10 papers have been accepted. So 10 papers coming out and actually already out there in the internet have this statement of diversity, equity, inclusion in the manuscript. And I was saying that's about our acceptance rate. So 10 out of the 120. So, I think the first manuscript to come out with the statement will be in October and we're really excited. And I hope everybody agrees that this makes us really cool and certainly leading the way among gastroenterologists, but maybe also around healthcare as other journals are looking at what we're doing and want to move it forward. So that's my story. Thank you so much, Jennifer. And thank you, Deborah as well. Next, I would like to introduce everyone to Dr. Bob Thirkrau. Dr. Thirkrau is a member of the ASGE Member Engagement Committee. He practices at Rockford Gastroenterology. Dr. Thirkrau led ASGE's recent launch of a new mentorship program. Bob, we look forward to hearing your committee's plans. Thank you, Victoria. Thank you again on behalf of Dr. Fergal Gleason and the MEC for allowing me to participate in this very important discussion. Really honored to be included in this team panel and thank you, Dr. Christie, for those words. I think this initiative couldn't have come at a better time. I just want to spend a few minutes talking about ASGE's newest mentorship program that actually went online July 1st. I was on the subcommittee co-chaired with Pari Shah, with big shout out to Pari for helping spearhead this and my other committee members. And also a big thanks to Lakisha and Bina for doing all the hard work to get this thing off the ground. I don't need to reemphasize this to this group. We understand how important a mentor-mentee relationship is in influencing the professional development of individuals. So we felt that the ASGE could provide value in this sphere given the depth of experience amongst our members in developing a robust program. So we initially, as we discussed this, we wanted to keep our goals a bit modest. We didn't want to overreach early on. So currently the way this program stands, it's designed for fellows in their second and third year. It'll be a two-year program where they will be matched up with a mentor with whom they will engage at least twice a year for one hour. If they wish to visit their practice, that's fine. But given the pandemic and all, I think it'd probably be a virtual in the beginning. The goals would be two broad goals, personal development and career development guidance. We wanted to be clear that this was not going to be for clinical advice, but more clinical career guidance and personal development. And the match was based on various parameters, academic versus private, gender preference, ethnicity preference, skills, expertise, whether they wanted to focus on leadership, roles beyond practice, research development, advancing careers, so on and so forth, networking, work-life balance, et cetera. The way the program is currently set up, there would be a survey at the initial part, and then there would be checkpoint surveys throughout the two-year program at six months, 12 months, 18 months, and 24 months. So like I said, we wanted our goals to be slightly bodiced so we know what we could handle. So our initial goal was to have 30 mentors with 60 mentees. I'm happy to report the response was actually overwhelming. So currently, based on our numbers, we have 49 mentors and 69 mentees. And we, of course, hope to expand this further as the program develops. As I mentioned, the program went online July 1st. So we do have some initial numbers in terms of what people were looking for. In terms of gender breakdown, 71% of the mentors and mentees were male, and 29% were females. This is, the female group actually is slightly better than what we'd expected because our membership base is about 18% female. So we had a higher percentage of females in the mentor-mentee group. Of the goals or things people were looking for in terms of mentees, vast majority chose clinical practice guidance as the overriding thing that they were looking for in a mentor. And about over 50% of all mentee applicants listed leadership skill, improving communication and networking and career advancement as one of their top priorities. Unfortunately, we were woefully inadequate in getting underrepresented minorities as mentors and mentees. For the mentor part, I think part of it is because initially we opened up the mentorship roles to committee members and leadership. So I think once we expand that pool, I'm hoping that we can increase the pool of underrepresented minorities in the mentor pool. We have to work hard in getting the mentee pool higher up in terms of underrepresented minorities. So that will be our goal. I think we're gonna gather more information as the program unfolds and then hopefully be able to tweak and manage to kind of make this program commensurate with the goals of the DEI committee. And we look forward to working with the committee on this. Other things that this committee is looking for is to create a similar program for perhaps early career gastroenterologist as well. So we're very excited and we look forward to hearing from you guys about this program. Thank you. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Bob. And I believe that the mentor-mentee pairings just were announced yesterday as well. That's correct. To see this program evolve over the next several years. Thank you for your hard work. Thank you. Next up is Dr. Bruce Hennessey. Dr. Hennessey is the managing partner of Ohio Gastroenterology in Columbus, Ohio. And he also serves as the chair of the ASGE Health and Public Policy Committee. Bruce, the audience is yours. Thank you, Dr. Gomez for the introduction. I would also like to thank Dr. Rex and Dr. Christie and the ASGE staff for the opportunity to highlight some of the Health and Public Policy Committee diversity, equity, and inclusion activities. During the March and April of this year, members of the Health and Public Policy Committee in collaboration with the diversity committee members participated in virtual hill visits and meetings with members of Congress and their staff. The priority focus of these meetings was to put a spotlight on the CDC's Colorectal Cancer Control Program. The CDC Colorectal Cancer Control Program is a government program started around 2008 with the intention of working with clinics, hospitals, tribal organizations, and healthcare organizations to improve strategies which have been shown to increase screening. The focus of the program is on traditionally underserved or underrepresented populations, age 50 to 75, where screening rates have lagged other segments of the population. Target groups have been from rural communities, the undereducated, low-income, and minorities. Data from the program has shown that over a two-year period from 2016 to 2018, screening rates increased by over 10%, where if you compare that to other screening programs or other programs focused on screening, increases have only been one or 2%, so significant opportunities within the program. The ask was for an increase in funding from 43 million to 70 million. The funding in the program had been stagnant at 43 million since 2013, and members of Congress that were specifically targeted for support included all the new members as well as racial or ethnic minority members to increase awareness regarding this very successful and deserving program. Members of the committees were also requested that members of Congress join Representative Donald Payne Jr. and Representative Rodney Davis, who co-chaired the Colorectal Cancer Caucus, to join the caucus. A particular focus of the Colorectal Cancer Caucus is in highlighting opportunities to improve colorectal cancer screening rates among traditionally underrepresented populations. Going forward, the Health and Public Policy Committee hopes to continue its collaboration with the Diversity Committee in highlighting and advocating for legislation which promotes greater diversity, equity, and inclusion. Current examples would include draft legislation from Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee Chair, Anna Eshoo from California, which would attempt to hold manufacturers, device and drug manufacturers, accountable for clinical trial diversity, and enrollment in trials would be tied in some way to the makeup of the overall population. So that's it, thank you. Thank you so much, Bruce, that was excellent. And last but not least, we will hear from Dr. Jonathan Cohen, an ASGE Governing Board Counselor and Co-Chair of ASGE's Promoting the Value of Colonoscopy campaign. Dr. Cohen is currently a clinical professor of medicine at NYU School of Medicine and a private practice at Vanguard Gastroenterology in Manhattan. John, thank you for your time tonight. Victoria, thank you so much for inviting me, including me in this great session. And Doug and Jennifer, thanks for your leadership. And it's very exciting to now present a little bit about how some of the themes that we've been hearing have been able to be infused into the Value of Colonoscopy campaign to essentially enhance and make it better and through taking deliberate action and also through collaboration. So just a word about the VOC. This began in 2019 as an effort to get the word out to our members, to support them with more information about the Value of Colonoscopy for their referring internists and for the public in response in part to a lot of information and marketing about other means of screening. And with COVID, it sort of went on hold. And we were reviving it this past fall as we were trying to emerge from the depths of the pandemic. And we got together and we thought about some themes and they were totally influenced by a number of factors, but certainly one of the factors was the sort of dramatic increased accentuation of healthcare disparities that brought out by COVID. I think there was a lot of impact as well as with the prominent passing of Chadwick Boseman in terms of the effect of colorectal cancer, both in underserved communities, but also in younger patients as well. So with our approach, we started out with, well, what are the themes that we wanted to focus on the content? And one of those prominent themes was improving access and overcoming barriers to colorectal screening in general and colonoscopy in particular in underserved communities. And the first step we did really was work and reach out to Jennifer and the diversity committee and talk about how we might work together in advance in this area. And we actually had two members of our task force from the diversity committee, Earl Campbell and Mohammed Bilal, who've been fantastic in helping us shape this pillar. What we've done is really so far in the first six months is develop our content and as well as we've gotten a series of interviews, we have an interview on our website now with Earl Campbell and Daryl Gray talking about these issues of what the barriers are to colorectal cancer screening and how to overcome them. It's great, it's on the website now. Fola May has a full presentation that she's working on that's soon to be included as well. So we've been working on the content and the second real part of the campaign is to really work on the messaging. How do we get the message out to primary care providers in the communities, to our gastroenterologists in the communities to then be able to use these as educational tools and to the public? And so we also have a social media campaign that Mohammed Bilal is gonna be spearheading. And again, we're gonna be trying to work together with the diversity committee to figure out how best to reach and in terms of the content and the messaging in underserved communities. So I think that also we've been working together with our industry supporters. We have a number of areas in which our interests are aligned but one of them is in terms of this pillar, in terms of reaching out to this area of health equity, I think this is a strong area of interest. And so we're gonna be working together to figure out how we can work with our industry partners in the VOC campaign to get some focus on this particular aspect of our messaging. So I think that this is exciting and it's also sort of illustrates sort of a paradigm how these issues can be integrated very nicely into the general theme of general activities of some of the ASG committees and task forces that aren't particularly focused on DEI but it obviously can be integrated into it and make the effort a lot stronger. So that's what we're up to. Excellent. Thank you so much, John, for your input. Well, I would like to thank all of our panelists for sharing a little bit about the work underway at ASGE. So now we will take the balance of our time to address your questions and gather your feedback on ASGE's efforts relative to diversity, equity, and inclusion. So while the audience questions come in, I would like to ask the panel, as ASGE is in the process of developing educational resources for members and their teams in the area of diversity, equity, and inclusion, what resources do you think would be helpful for our members to enhance DEI within their teams, to ensure DEI in the office, and to ensure that their teams are providing high-quality care to all patient populations? I'd like to start asking Luke, what do you think about this question? Yeah. Thanks, Victoria. That's a great question, and again, really want to thank everyone tonight for participating on this panel, because I think it's an incredibly important topic. And so really applaud the ASGE for really moving this to the forefront and really having an engaged and great discussion tonight on it. In terms of your question, I think the way I always sort of think about it is really regarding your team and then also your patients as it relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion. So in thinking about your team, I think you have to kind of sort of think from the top down. So looking at your leadership team and looking at your frontline staff and really thinking about, does our team represent who we're serving in our community? Is it diverse? Is it representative of the patients that we're caring for? And so I think really being objective and taking a hard look at your team and really asking those difficult questions, I think is critical and the first thing to do. I think it's also one, thinking about educational opportunities. You heard a lot here about the Mentor-Mentee Program, a lot of programs that ASGE has for developing future leaders. And so I think that's really critically important, is really providing those educational opportunities, whether it's within GI societies or outside of it. I think also just having frank discussions about it. At our organization, we have a charter around diversity, equity, and inclusion, but we also have metrics that we hold ourselves accountable to, very much like the ASGE is, ensuring that we have diverse teams in terms of our committees, our hiring committees within our operational areas on our leadership team. And so I think really being intentional about it, but really setting goals of how you want to accomplish it and really, I think, being transparent and holding your organization accountable to those recommendations. And then on the patient side, I think you heard a lot of great discussion tonight, is really, I think, looking at data. I think looking at data within the field of GI to see where there might be disparities. You know, there's a multitude of lenses you can look at various gastrointestinal diseases as it relates to DEI, but I think it's important that we start doing that. You know, we're starting to do it in some of our research, as you heard today from the GIE editorial board, but really, I think, you know, being much more intentional about it within our own practices, looking where there might be disparities. And then once you identify those disparities, it's really, I think, drilling down and asking yourself the question of why is this happening? Why is this being perpetuated? Why is this going on? And I think really involving both your teams, the organization, but really your patients in the community with really trying to develop what those interventions might be. So those are the things that I would sort of, you know, if people are really beginning their journey on this, those are sort of the approaches that I would take on it. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Luke. I do have another question for the panelists. So as the title of tonight's webinar is, we all have a scope in this. What do you think we can all do as gastroenterologists and other healthcare professionals to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in gastroenterology and endoscopy? I'd like to start this round with asking Bruce. Bruce, what are your thoughts? Well, I think, you know, when I look or listen to that question, one of the first things I think of is our own personal responsibility. So I think, you know, done are the days when you can sit, you know, on the sidelines and wait for somebody else to offer you suggestions. I think we have to take a personal responsibility in asking ourselves, what more can we do? Some of these might be personal. Some of them might be within our own practices. Some of them might be with regards to our staff, but we have to do what we can, whether it's identifying residents who may not normally have chosen to go into GI, who may be underrepresented in the field of GI, and supporting them. Whether it's in my own group, as an example, I was talking about earlier, was we're underrepresented in our, among our female leaders in our group. We don't have board members who are female gastroenterologists. And it's a part that we actually now feel is a blind spot for us. It may limit our ability to attract more female gastroenterologists. And we'll have to go and ask, what are we missing? What are we not doing that can help promote their inclusion in the leadership structure? Because most of this ends up being somewhat of a blind spot for us when we don't know what keeps people from, you know, accepting leadership positions or stepping into those roles or actively engaging with the leadership to see what the next step is to arise in all of our programs, because we certainly will benefit from it. So we all know that diversity, equity, inclusion results in our overall population benefit. And I think those are some of the questions that we have to ask going forward. Correct. Thank you so much, Bruce. Well, we do have a really great question from the audience. So someone wants to know, what is the best way for someone in private practice to get involved in this DEI initiative? If I have ideas for studies for diverse patients, who do I reach out to? This particular individual has an interest in obesity as well as colorectal cancer, colonoscopy prevention and performing, and also performs office endoscopy. Perhaps maybe John could try and answer this question. You're in private practice. What are your thoughts? Well, I think that this is, I think we need to, we do need a forum for members to be able to interact with leadership in this whole DEI enterprise. So we can't be in a silo. And so I do think that, I mean, in terms of research, there's different parts of our society are working on research and people are working on practice operations and we have various forums. So I don't think there's any one solution. I do think that in, speaking from my own perspective in private practice, you know, well, Bruce already just sort of spoke to some of it as looking as individually as how one can look around oneself at one's co-workers. And also, I think Jennifer has made this point a lot in the past. In terms of pipeline, I think that we all interact with residents or, you know, maybe first year fellows. We need to get more of them involved and I think take deliberate action is a great theme rather than just passively wait for someone to approach as one of us to give them leadership and mentorship. I think we need to make some proactive moves to support that and in our own practices and ways. I think those research ideas are to be greatly encouraged and maybe someone else will talk about the best avenue within ASGE, but we definitely want to get those ideas in and we do have grant application for research awards and that may be one great step in going on our website and looking and applying because I certainly think there's a lot of emphasis on those types of projects that will be prioritized. Thank you, Johnny. And actually, and I was going to add to that as well that absolutely, I mean, these research awards are open to all ASGE members, even international members, doesn't matter whether you are an academic or private practice. The other point is, is that when you have a big idea for a research project, don't think that you have to take it all upon yourself or just within your institution. This is where the collaboration and the meetings come into play. This is where ASGE and working with your other colleagues and the other sister societies, this is where the magic really happens, so really reaching out to other members and forming these collaborative relationships to be able to answer the questions that you want to answer, whether you're in private or academic practice. And Victoria, if I may add, I would encourage this participant to getting involved in the mentorship program. I think that would be a great stepping stone to advancing that particular goal, so I think that would be a good point as well. Excellent. Yes, definitely. Well, I wonder, I just wanted to add, I'm sorry, as far as like the ARIA program, I don't know, Luke, if you have any thoughts about that, because you talked about certain metrics that'll be considered as part of quality, and that may be another mechanism for that participant to be engaged in these types of activities. No, I completely agree with you, Jennifer. I was going to suggest, I think, one, the research award is a nice avenue for this individual because it sounds like they have an interest in a particular topic, and so I think really putting their foot forward on it, and I think the work that we're doing with you and your committee, really looking at is there an opportunity to advance quality improvement work through the lens of DEI, especially over the next couple of months to years, definitely, I think this would be an opportunity as well. If I could just comment, because it's an interesting point to bring up, how can I get more involved in the organization, in the process, in the value for DEI, and you've heard a lot of great presentations tonight from our committee chairs, the leadership that Jennifer Christie has provided. I think you can get a sense that we're trying to be clicking on all cylinders, but inevitably, we can't be clicking on all cylinders because we don't necessarily see everything. We don't see all the areas where we should be trying to do better, where we should be trying to improve awareness and parts of our organization. It's a pretty open organization, and I think you should feel, if you see an area where you think we can do better, a cylinder that we're missing, send Jennifer Christie an email. I know she'd want to hear from you. Sometimes, some of the very best ideas that come along for a society like this are from people that are in the trenches and who see the issues that are going on. Send an email to me. I'd love to hear from members, and so I would encourage you to feel like it's an open organization, and we want to hear from you. I think one of the ... We have heard a lot of great ideas about how we can increase the value for DEI in our practices, and I think we also are hearing more about what we can do for patients to try to reduce disparities. We've got somebody who's in private practice. People in private practice know a tremendous amount about delivering healthcare. As I go around, and I'm a visitor at a variety of programs around the country, mostly pre-COVID, but you see a lot of programs that are in safety net hospitals. They're serving socioeconomically disadvantaged patients, and they've got huge problems with delivery of colonoscopy. They have long waiting lists of people that are fit positive that are waiting to get a colonoscopy. I think we have a huge amount of expertise within the organization that we could bring to bear on that. We can do a lot to try to understand what the issues are in these systems, and what the obstacles are, and to offer some help. A lot of different ways that members can be involved. If you see things we can do better, please bring it to our attention. Thank you so much, Doug. We do have a couple questions. One is, so we all recognize how important mentorship is to growth and development of mentees, and that we need to increase mentorship in underrepresented groups, but what other things can we do to increase the pool of mentors? Sorry, go ahead, Lakisha. No, go ahead, Bob, because you're the- No, I was just going to say that, as I mentioned in my brief talk, that our initial pool was limited to committee members and leadership. We plan to open it up to the entire ASG membership, so that should expand the pool greatly in terms of people who can get involved. I mean, anybody would be eligible to get involved. Since we wanted to take baby steps, we didn't want to undertake something that we wouldn't be able to handle, so I think if this progresses smoothly, which I think it will, there's no reason why we cannot expand our pool to the entire ASG membership to become mentors. I think that alone will fix some of those glitches. Beyond that, I think we've also talked about engaging with our international partners. I think that will certainly add to increasing engagement in terms of diversity in Latin America, Asia, so I think that's going to be another step where we would engage with possibly mentors and mentees internationally, which would add to our diversity pool. Yeah, I think those are great suggestions, Bob. I think those definitely will increase our pool, and then it's just going to take time, like you mentioned, for this particular program. I will say, in general, though, I think we all are pulled in a million different directions, whether we're in academia or private practice, and we mentor a lot of different individuals at all levels. Certainly, when you are asked to maybe mentor somebody else, it becomes overwhelming. I will say, personally, as a woman and as an African-American woman, I get tapped a lot to mentor everybody, anyone, but certainly people who are also underrepresented. It does become even more taxing, but I know it's important, and we have to do it. I think it's even more valuable to know that I don't have to be the mentor for the African-American students or residents in my practice. Bruce or Luke, anybody could do that just as well or better than I can, and I know you do it already. Really letting even mentees know that you're available to do that and taking on that responsibility. I think the other thing would also be having mentors understand the value and maybe having specific timing. You guys, Bob, have done a really good job in this program of the timeline around this and perhaps achieving a certain goal. I think being very specific about the timeline and the goal, and then you do what you can, and then perhaps free up your time to mentor someone else. I think being very specific about what the expectations are will help more people to join the mentorship pool. Victoria, I'd like to add that we have a program coming up, I think, in the next six months on training the trainer, training the endoscopic teacher. I think we're really great at teaching, and I think that expanding to do some programming to train the mentor is something where we could do something at a more scalable level to really help us expand that pool. Something we should really think about how we can integrate that into our training expertise to train mentors. That's excellent. I was just going to add that a very quick thing everybody can do is even mentorship takes so much time, but something everybody should be doing is sponsorship. It's really important when you're asked as a leader to name somebody who could sit on a committee or who could go give a talk that you really get beyond the first person who comes to your mind and think very intentionally and make sure that you are doing it through the lens, as we've been saying, of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and just really try to make sure that you're going beyond that first person you think of. That just takes a minute, but it's amazing how that alone, really that sponsorship concept is even as important maybe as mentorship. Absolutely, and we do have time maybe for just one final question. Someone wants to know, so will this campaign of diversity, equity, and inclusion become part of the ASGE's foundation focus moving forward as well? I think that's a yes. Doug, do you want to answer that? Yeah, I don't think we've incorporated it fully into future efforts, but I think it makes perfect sense. We have funded this initial research award, and that kind of award technically comes from the foundation, so that's one focus, but I think research is only one area where we are going to ask and need funding for with regard to DEI and with regard to reducing disparities in the delivery of healthcare. So it's a great question, and I think absolutely it should become part of our foundation's focus and efforts. Jennifer, you have thoughts about that? Yeah, and I didn't see the actual question, but yeah, I mean that's the goal. I think certainly you can see from the panel and from leadership tonight that it is high on everyone's priority list, and we have an engaged group of leaders at the very top. So I think we're all very excited about where this is going, and it's something that we're creating that can be sustainable and move on to the next group of leadership and the next committee, so that's exactly why we have rolled this out in a society-wide strategy, so that it is something that can be in perpetuity. So I think it's important, and really I want to thank the members of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee. We've been at this now a year as a separate committee, and they've worked really hard with the help of Lakeisha and Michelle. As Ruth said earlier, we work for Lakeisha and really moving everything along, so it's just really been a privilege. Absolutely. Well, this is wonderful. Well, I think if we don't have any other questions or comments, Eden, how are we doing with time? We are a little bit past the top of the hour, so we can wrap this up, Dr. Gomez. Okay, well again, I want to thank our panelists. I want to thank our ASGE members for joining in on this very important webinar, and we look forward to seeing you at more of our future webinars, events, and please, if you have any questions, that you can reach out to us at membership at ASGE.org, and thanks so much. Eden, back over to you. Thank you, Dr. Gomez, and to the entire panel. In closing, thank you for your participation in this discussion on advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in GI. This concludes our presentation. We hope this information is useful to you and your practice. Thank you.

American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy

ASGE

diversity

equity

inclusion

gastroenterology

DEI initiatives

mentorship program

minority health

healthcare disparities