Addressing Structural Barriers and Discrimination to Improve Health Equity

--COURSE IN DEVELOPMENT--

Course Description

Discrimination and various forms of differential treatment show up in reinforced disparities in systems such as education, employment, and healthcare. An understanding of the foundations of these structural barriers is crucial to addressing disparities, particularly in various biomedical fields. Structural barriers and discrimination show up in several ways in healthcare, such as inequitable access to affordable healthcare and overrepresentation of poor health outcomes in marginalized communities. Because these disparities continue to be reinforced in the larger society and through specific policies and practices in biomedicine, it is essential that individuals in the workforce become equipped with an understanding of the sources of structural discrimination and strategies that can reduce disparities. 

About STEM vs STEMM

Throughout the course, you will see certain content that refers to the original acronym STEM, which stands for science, technology, engineering, and math. More increasingly, various educational organizations have started to utilize the updated term STEMM, with the additional M standing for medicine. This new inclusion allows for an extended focus on equipping students for future careers in the health sciences and biomedicine. You will see these two acronyms in different contexts, based on the use of the previous term in several reports and publications that are referred to in the course.

Course Structure 

This asynchronous course is divided into five learning modules, each composed of 3-4 sections and taking approximately 30 minutes to complete. After completing this course, individuals will be able to 1) define concepts associated with structural discrimination; 2) recognize the ways that structural discrimination is normalized in biomedical education and the workforce; 3) explain how the concept of intersectionality outlines how marginalized and privileged individuals are affected in various systems; 4) challenge misconceptions about structural discrimination; and 5) utilize strategies from a toolkit designed to recognize and reduce disparities in various work situations.

Course Modules

  • Module 1: Definitions of Structural Barriers and Discrimination
  • Module 2: Structural Barriers as a Cultural Norm
  • Module 3: Intersectionality
  • Module 4: Effects of Structural Barriers and Discrimination 
  • Module 5: Solutions Toolkit for Challenging Structural Barriers and Discrimination

Course Director 

Veronica Baldwin, PhD

Dr. Veronica Jones Baldwin (publishing under Veronica A. Jones) is an Associate Professor in the Program of Higher Education at the University of North Texas. She earned her Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from Texas A&M University in 2014. Before starting her career in higher education, she taught in various Texas K-12 school districts for more than 10 years as an English as a Second Language teacher. In 2014, Dr. Baldwin served as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin for the Program in Higher Education Leadership. Since being at the University of North Texas, she has been recognized for her research, receiving the award for Outstanding Junior Faculty Researcher in 2020 for UNT’s College of Education.

In the UNT higher education program, Dr. Baldwin teaches courses for master’s and doctoral students, including legal aspects of higher education, introduction to college teaching, and qualitative research. Her work has been featured in journals such as the Review of Higher Education, Teachers College Record, and Education Sciences. Through research methodologies such as critical discourse analysis, she explores the effect of structures, policies and practices on underrepresented and marginalized campus communities. In 2022, she received a grant from the Spencer Foundation to study the effect of state policies on faculty members who employ critical frameworks in their teaching and scholarship.

Instrumental Persons

We would also like to recognize the contributions of the following people who shared in the implementation of this course on MyNRMN:

  • Toufeeq Syed, PhD, MS, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
  • Damaris Javier, PhD, University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth
  • Jambook K. Vishwanatha, PhD, University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth
  • Veronica Jones Baldwin, PhD, University of North Texas
  • Aidan Hoyal, MSIS, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
  • Katie Stinson, MLIS, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
  • Erika Thompson, PhD, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio

This course licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 Unported License:



Course materials licensed via Creative Commons: 
Attribution-NonCommercial--NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
(CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

The creation of this course was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number 25GM149965. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.