Students at the UVM College of Medicine recently hosted medical students from four schools in the Northeast with a goal to form a coalition dedicated to improving LGBTQ+ health through medical education.

Medical students from Brown University, Yale, Harvard, and the University of Connecticut traveled to campus December 12, 2014 to hear the inaugural LGBTQ Health Equity Lecture from Vito Imbasciani, M.D.’85, titled “It’s a Rainbow World: Caring for a Diverse Population.” Imbasciani, a urologic surgeon at Southern California Permanente Medical Group in Los Angeles, Calif., created the endowed lectureship fund with his spouse, George DiSalvo, M.D., to “ensure the preparation of culturally-competent physicians who can provide medical care and prevention services that are specific to LGBTQ populations.”

After the lecture, Imbasciani met with the visiting medical students and students from the UVM College of Medicine Gender and Sexuality Alliance to discuss how each of the represented medical schools address LGBTQ+ health. Students presented curriculum highlights from their respective institution. Matthew Shear ’17 says students at UVM are now in the process of visually mapping the LGBTQ+ health curricula, with a goal of fostering collaboration and information sharing. The effort to form a coalition between the medical student leaders from many institutions began just prior to the release of the first ever Resource for Medical Educators related specifically to LGBTQ+ healthcare from the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC), Shear notes.

Link to a downloadable version of the AAMC publication titled “Implementing Curricular and Institutional Climate Changes to Improve Health Care for Individuals Who are LGBT, Gender Non-Conforming, or Born with DSD.”