Reimagining Professional Identity Formation Through Racial Affinity Group Caucusing in Medical Education

• In Event: Belonging and Becoming: Racial Affinity Group Caucus Pedagogy in Medical Education

Abstract

A growing body of scholarship highlights the urgent need to address systemic racism within health professions education, given the persistent racial inequities in health outcomes and the ways medical training perpetuates racial bias. Traditional curricula often lack discussion of inequities and often perpetuate racial biases, leaving underrepresented learners to navigate racialized experiences largely unsupported. Racial Affinity Group Caucusing (RAGC) has emerged as a promising pedagogical practice offering counterspaces where marginalized learners can challenge dominant narratives, foster community, and resist systemic oppression. Embedded within antiracist curricular frameworks, RAGCs provide a structured environment for reflection, healing, and dialogue, directly addressing the social and institutional factors that shape professional identity formation (PIF).

Current PIF frameworks in medical education often conceptualize identity formation as an individualized, linear process of “becoming a doctor,” obscuring how racism, power, and systemic inequities influence professional development. Even as more relational and socially constructed models of PIF emerge, prevailing metaphors—such as PIF-as-journey or PIF-as-mold—remain dominant, implying uniform pathways to professionalism and overlooking the additional cultural labor required of learners underrepresented in medicine. This paper proposes an alternative framing of PIF as a situated, relational, and racialized process shaped by cultural and institutional contexts. Drawing on subjectification theory, racial identity development models, and bell hooks’ engaged pedagogy, it argues for educational spaces that affirm the whole person, integrating racial and cultural identities as central to professional identity. This paper draws on empirical evidence from RAGC implementation in medical education to demonstrate RAGCs capacity to increase learner belongingness and critical consciousness, supporting efforts to broaden the conceptualization of professional identity. Ultimately, this paper argues that RAGCs are more than supplemental supports; they represent a transformative pedagogical intervention that reimagines professional identity formation to reflect the lived realities of racially and culturally diverse learners. Their intentional design holds potential to foster belonging and contribute to institutional change across health professions education.

Authors

• Leanna Lewis, University of California - Berkeley

• Diana Ponce, University of California - San Francisco