About Building Community

Why are we doing this?

Quite simply, it is the right thing to do. When we are at our best, our skills in interacting with each other are a source of strength for our patients and drive our discoveries and learning forward.

We are leaders in education, research, patient care and service, and yet we remain vulnerable to the challenges facing medical schools and academic health centers across the country, including burnout and incivility. While we know these issues are complex and pervasive, we simply will not settle for good enough. We aim to set the gold standard for professionalism, collegiality and inclusiveness.

We must create an exceptional culture in which our faculty, staff and learners feel empowered to reach their goals and be the best they can be. We must be able to recruit and retain physicians, scientists and students from diverse backgrounds. We must welcome them and make them feel valued. Moreover, we must take better care of each other and ourselves to address issues of stress and burnout.

This effort requires nothing less than total commitment from each of us. It will at times be difficult, and it will not happen quickly. Nevertheless, it is imperative to fulfilling our mission.

Building Community – our shared values

• Integrity and Accountability – Every person, every action, every time.
• Compassion – Treat all with kindness, understanding, and empathy.
• Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity – Advance health and health equity by respecting the rights, dignity, and differences of all.
• Excellence – Strive for the very best in all we do.

Building Community priorities

• Promote awareness, understanding and commitment to our shared values of integrity, accountability, compassion, diversity, equity, inclusivity and excellence
• Ensure that the learning and working environments across SMPH are welcoming to all and allow all individuals to feel connected and to flourish
• Continue to build a diverse community of faculty, staff and learners
• Promote a culture in which there is zero tolerance for discrimination and harassment
• Ensure individuals and departments have resources that will allow them to enact transformational change in our organization’s culture

Building Community process

Since the beginning of 2018, the Building Community Steering Committee has conducted research and listening sessions to gather community feedback on ideas regarding the best ways to achieve our goals. Success in accomplishing the vision of Building Community in the School of Medicine and Public Health is dependent on the ongoing commitment and engagement of all members of the SMPH community and continued collaboration with UW Health, our statewide campuses and other partner institutions.

The steering committee developed several work teams to focus on issues such as professionalism and accountability and equity, inclusion and engagement. We are also collaborating very closely with UW Health on clinician wellness programming.

The groups have announced and worked toward specific goals, initiatives and strategies that will take this work deeper. As some work teams finish their tasks, others are created to carry on the work or put a proposed strategy into action.

We are building on a strong foundation, and we will continue to support existing initiatives that carry out these priorities.

Building Community comprises four phases:

1. Discovery and pre-planning
2. Building of plan infrastructures
3. Communications
4. Implementation

Completion of the implementation phase will simply mark the end of the structured work teams; our efforts toward Building Community across the School of Medicine and Public health are, and will be, ongoing and will be ingrained in our culture as we continuously strive to be the best place to work and learn.