Department of Surgery DEI Committee

DEI Committee Statement

The Rutgers NJMS Department of Surgery DEI Committee was created in 2020 in response to the social injustices faced by our nation. It is comprised of faculty, residents and staff who meet regularly to discuss DEI concerns, to develop action plans, and to organize outreach projects to support our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

To achieve our mission, we will endeavor to achieve the following goals:

• Foster belonging for all members regardless of gender, ability, race, sexual identity, sexual orientation, education, national origin, or religion.  
• Recognize, recruit, retain and promote diverse faculty, staff and trainees. 
• Ensure an equitable recruitment process for all faculty, staff and trainees. 
• Ensure that recruited individuals acknowledge and support our mission as a department. 
• Ensure and maintain compensation equity and transparency for all members.  
• Evaluate all departmental policies and procedures to ensure they follow current DEI standards. 
• Integrate the principles of DEI into all educational efforts, including featured speakers, workshops, conferences and courses created or promoted by our department. 
• Acknowledge the well-defined health disparities which exist in medicine and our diverse patient population and promote quality improvement (QI) projects and research to address them. 
• Provide a safe forum where issues of racism, bias, microaggression, and other breaches of DEI can be discussed and addressed.