Season 4, Episode 6
Episode Guests:
Allison Kessler, MD, MSc, is section chief of the Renée Crown Center for Spinal Cord Innovation, associate director of the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab’s Spinal Cord Injury Medicine Fellowship, and assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Lisa Meeks, PhD, MA, is associate professor at the University of Michigan Medical School, executive director and founder of the DocWithDisabilities Initiative, and the host of the “Docs with Disabilities” podcast.
Despite roughly a quarter of the U.S. population having a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the representation of practicing physicians who have disabilities lags behind. Only about 3% of doctors in the United States have a disability according to AAMC data. Why does representation for those with disabilities fall so short? On this episode of “Beyond the White Coat” we discuss why doctors with disabilities are underrepresented in medicine, how society at large continues to play a role in ableism, and small actions that schools and individuals can take that could have big influences on encouraging more people with disability to pursue medicine.
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