Kaiser Medical School Partners with Da Vinci RISE to Target Health Disparities

Earlier this month, Da Vinci RISE Executive Director Erin Whalen taught a lesson to medical students in their second year of training at the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine on how Adverse Childhood Experiences, known as ACEs, can be leveraged as a tool to create holistically supportive institutions designed to elicit healing, trust and equity within the medical field and beyond.

The medical students used Da Vinci RISE as a case study to examine the outcomes and experiences of our school community to inform their work as medical professionals. This is Erin’s second year teaching this lesson as a component of the Service-Learning Course, with the support of Professor Resa R. Caivano, MD. The objective of this unit is to expose the medical students to different social and structural determinants of health to better prepare them to improve the health for all people, including those whose lives have been impacted by the criminal justice system. As a school community we know that the best work we can do is in community with others within and beyond the scope of education.