Student-Run “Duke Medical Ethics Journal” releases spring issue focused on Identity

The Duke Medical Ethics Journal was created in 2019 by a team of students that recognized the importance, and lack, of ethics education in their pre-medical curriculum. Their goal was to change that by sparking conversation on Duke’s campus and beyond so that we might move past the notion that medicine as a field is a black and white science. DMEJ’s previous issues have covered issues of patient autonomy and the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis.

The Spring 2021 issue tackles the topic of Health and Identity. “We are all a product of our culture and our values,” write DMEJ Spring 2021 co-presidents Priya Meesa and Sibani Ram. “Healthcare at its deepest level is not just about the biomedical model but it’s also about care, care for the culture and values that permeate the lives of its practitioners and patients.” By highlighting stories of marginalized identities and considering how identity influences health, the journal hopes to advances this empathic model of care and improve outcomes for all.

Sibani is a pre-med student and member of the Ethics Living-Learning Community here at the Kenan Institute for Ethics. As a co-president, she compiles and edits pieces from throughout the semester to ready them for publication. Thought the last year has been filled with many unforseen challenges, she said that “DMEJ has been the most rewarding part of my college experience as I am so deeply convinced that medical ethics has a transformative power. The power to transform ourselves and the power to transform the structures through which we experience healthcare.”

To read the Duke Medical Ethics Journal Spring 2021 issue, previous issues and blogs, visit dukemedicalethicsjournal.com