Table 2.

Action for Cultural Transformation Strategic Initiative Overview

Pillar	ACT initiative	Recommendation	Key actions
Culture	Vice Chair, IDE, committee Support initiative	Inventory of health system IDE councils and Vice Chairs Establish annual IDE Summit	Established a more cohesive network of IDE committees, chairs, and individuals across Penn Medicine to effectively amplify initiatives Launched inaugural ACT/IDE summit in September 2023
Culture	Affinity groups Initiative	Create Penn Medicine Community Groups	Initiated a supportive employee resource group to cultivate a culture of inclusion and diversity for UPHS
Culture	Designing forums Initiative	Revise training and toolkits for facilitating conversations	Designed forums at multiple levels of the organization to ensure employees and leaders are engaged, learning, appraised of progress, and deepening the collective understanding of inclusion, diversity, and equity
Culture	Communications Initiative	Enhance centralized communications. Increase transparency and institutional humility in content	Implemented text-based communication, subscription, and centralized communication hub to alleviate the racialized hierarchy-based digital divide within our system
Community	Community infrastructure Initiative	Approve funding to create Center for Community engagement	Established a community infrastructure to concentrate on enhancing services to underserved communities:
Clinical	Health equity improvement Program initiative	Create health equity improvement Collaborative Training Program Progress on two health equity goals; increase colon screenings and reduce major maternal morbidity and mortality	Expanded a health equity course focused on collaborative learning with the goal of improving equity problems Increased colon screenings by 70+% Reduced major maternal morbidity and mortality by 29+%
Clinical	Reporting and addressing discriminatory behavior	Create a quarterly bias reporting	Created a reporting structure to mitigate discriminatory behavior, colleague to colleague, patient to provider, and provider to patient Piloted an intervention process for those individuals and/or units where there are patterns of discriminatory/biased behavior
People	Employee relations Initiative	System-wide reporting forum, entry-level reporting huddles	HR policies were reviewed with a focus on policy language that impacts diverse employee populations Analysis of HR policies informed ongoing manager education on fair and equitable execution of policies and procedures and equitable opportunities
People	Employee hiring, professional development, and mobility initiative	System dashboard with diversity data, standardize hiring processes, create diversity career resource center	Created a system dashboard with appropriate diversity data to support a culture of accountability and the recognition of progress Introduced a “reverse mentoring” program, where community health workers educate senior UPHS Leaders on issues around community connection, health care access, and employment opportunity Established Penn Medicine and Pathways Emerging Careers program, and the internal Pathways to Promotion program, to provide employment and mobility opportunities to hundreds of employees and members of the community
Education	Student Advocacy and Support Initiative	Approved funding to launch IDEAL research program	Support system for medical and graduate students underwent structural reorganization Critical changes to the UME curriculum to address language that may be deemed as biased
Research	Cluster hiring Initiative	Hire faculty in clinical and basic science clusters with focus on health equity and IDE	Increase in the number of presidential professors for diverse faculty: 5 new diverse faculty hired

HR, Human Resources; IDE, Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity; IDEAL, Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Learner; UME, Undergraduate Medical Education; UPHS, University of Pennsylvania Health System.