Building Faculty, Staff, and Learner Community Through Racial Caucusing in Family Medicine

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

Abstract

In 2020, the UCSF Department of Family and Community Medicine launched a race-based caucusing initiative to confront the persistence of racism within our department and clinical learning environments. While our department has long committed to health equity and justice, microaggressions, exclusionary practices, and racialized harm continued to impact faculty, staff, trainees—and, by extension, the communities we serve. Recognizing that confronting racism requires both individual transformation and institutional action, we implemented race-based caucusing to create intentional, facilitated spaces for all department members - including >150 faculty, staff, and trainees - to reflect, grow, and build skills to challenge racism at all levels of academic medicine.

Rooted in principles of equity, psychological safety, and embodied healing, caucusing groups formed along racial/ethnic identities to support psychologically safe discussion and self-examination. The initial pilot included Black, white, and non-Black POC groups, later expanding to include Black, white, AAPI, Latine, and SWANA-M (Southwest Asian, North African, and Multiracial) caucuses. Facilitators completed training led by Dr. Sharon Washington and enrolled in her “Critically Conscious Connections” online curriculum, providing a shared learning platform. Incentives included 2 hours of protected time for bimonthly sessions, and non-faculty facilitators received a yearly stipend for their role.
Each caucus engaged with themes moving from self-awareness to interpersonal accountability to institutional transformation. Sessions addressed topics such as responding to racial harm, embodying allyship, integrating learning into workplace culture, and communication strategies rooted in accountability. One powerful exercise involved self-assessments regarding internalized racial inferiority and superiority.

Feedback data from 2023 and 2025 demonstrate sustained impact. In surveys (n=112), participants reported increased openness, cross-racial trust, and improved departmental culture, acknowledging harm and striving for repair. One participant shared, “There is a comfort within the department that we can talk about these things with each other.” Another reflected, “I actually had someone tell me about how they had been thinking that something they said years ago could have been a microaggression—openness and accountability is definitely more apparent than before.” Likert survey data affirm these shifts. Participants’ self-reported increases in racial literacy; allyship; confidence discussing racism; navigating personal and family dynamics; awareness of power dynamics; and cross-racial communication and collaboration in the department. Compared to 2023 responses, 2025 scores showed gains across all domains, suggesting caucusing’s impact persists and deepens over time.

Key lessons include the need for protected time, skilled facilitation, leadership buy-in, and alignment with equity goals. RAGC offers a replicable model for departments committed to shifting culture and embedding antiracism into their fabric. RAGCs are not a stand-alone solution—but our experience affirms its power as a catalyst for reflection, relationship-building, and long-term change. By creating spaces to acknowledge harm, build accountability, and imagine new ways of working together, caucusing helps academic medicine move from intention to impact in fighting systemic racism.

Authors

• Monica Hahn, University of California - San Francisco

• Sharon Washington, Sharon Washington Consulting

• Manuel Tapia, University of California - San Francisco

• Diana Coffa, University of California - San Francisco