Honoring Excellence: Q and A with Drs. Lahia Yemane and Carrie Rassbach of the Stanford Pediatrics Residency Program
This interview is one in a series of interviews with the 2025 recipients of the ACGME Awards. These awardees join an outstanding group of previous honorees whose work and contributions to graduate medical education (GME) represent the best in the field. They will be honored at the 2025 ACGME Annual Educational Conference, taking place February 20-22, 2025 in Nashville, Tennessee.
The Stanford pediatrics residency program is recognized with the 2025 Barbara Ross-Lee, DO Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award. Lahia Yemane, MD is the associate program director for recruitment and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at Stanford, and Carrie Rassbach, MD, MAEd is the pediatrics residency program director. They answered the ACGME’s questions about their program’s efforts to foster DEI.
ACGME: Tell us a little bit about your program.
Drs. Yemane and Rassbach: Our pediatrics residency has 122 residents across six programs (categorical, physician scientist, child neurology, combined pediatrics-anesthesiology, pediatrics-medical genetics, and triple board) and is part of the broader Stanford GME community of 1,500+ residents and fellows. Our program’s vision is: To develop outstanding clinicians and leaders in children’s health. Our program’s mission is: Through longitudinal mentorship and innovative curricula, we train physician leaders as compassionate clinicians, educators, advocates, and scholars to advance the health of all children and their families.
ACGME: Why is your program so dedicated to the concepts of DEI?
Yemane/Rassbach: As pediatricians and being in one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the country, we know that excellent patient care, teaching, and research cannot happen without a diverse workforce that represents the populations we serve. Although intentional recruitment efforts are critical, those in isolation are not enough to promote inclusive environments for underrepresented in medicine (UIM) learners that cultivate belonging and retention of residents as future fellows and faculty members.
ACGME: What work is your program specifically being recognized for?
Yemane/Rassbach: Our program has undertaken an intentional and multi-faceted approach to addressing recruitment, inclusion, and retention of UIM residents. In the award nomination, we primarily focused on two of our key programs, the Stanford Clinical Opportunity for Residency Experience (SCORE) Program and the Leadership Education in Advancing Diversity (LEAD) Program, which started in our residency program and then became models for other programs at our institution and nationally.
ACGME: Please explain what these programs look like.
Yemane/Rassbach: SCORE is a funded four-week clerkship rotation for UIM medical students that includes mentorship from residents and faculty members, community building, and networking. The program provides a $2,000 stipend and housing accommodations, which is critical to allow students to participate regardless of financial abilities. The aims of the SCORE Program are to (1) increase recruitment of UIM medical students into our pediatric residency program, (2) increase recruitment of UIM medical students into careers in academic pediatrics, and (3) advance our program and institution’s commitment to promoting diversity, inclusion, and health equity.
We created the LEAD Program with the vision to develop diverse, inclusive leaders who advance health equity. We believed that a 10-month, DEI-centered, longitudinal leadership program for UIM and non-UIM residents and fellows would (1) build leadership and scholarship capacity in DEI earlier in training, (2) foster allyship to reduce the minority tax, and (3) increase sense of belonging in academic medicine for UIM learners, with the ultimate goal of producing leaders in academic medicine dedicated to DEI and improving the culture of medicine. The program consists of monthly two-hour evening sessions. Residents and fellows are “scholars,” and faculty members and educational administrators are “mentors.” The program is based on the conceptual model of self-determination theory (intrinsic motivation is increased when competence, relatedness, and autonomy are increased). Each session includes the following:
- Competence: The first hour is an interactive teaching session on DEI and/or leadership topics (60 minutes).
- Relatedness: Small group reflection and discussion (30 minutes).
- Autonomy: Work in mentored, small groups on developing educational workshops on DEI topics of interest to the scholars (30 minutes).
This culminates in the annual Diversity and Inclusion Forum, which brings together hundreds of people from Stanford and the surrounding community to showcase the workshops created.
ACGME: How has this work helped make your program and institution more diverse and/or inclusive?
Yemane/Rassbach: In 2010, our pediatric residency was the first in our institution to pilot the SCORE Program, which then spread across the institution in 2015 and has been offered yearly since that time. Since 2015, we have had 76 students participate in our pediatric SCORE Program and 18 (24 percent) have matched into our residency program. We have also intentionally focused on recruitment from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and in the past three years (2021-2024), we have had seven students from HBCUs participate and six (86 percent) matched with us, which has contributed to our program having over 20 percent UIM residents each year. In terms of retention, we have many SCORE participants who stay at Stanford after residency for fellowship, chief residency, and faculty positions. Given its success, we collaborated so that our model could be used to create a GME-wide SCORE program that is now in place across 22 residency programs at Stanford. (Learn more about the SCORE Program: https://med.stanford.edu/visiting-clerkships/score-program.html.)
After a successful pilot in our Department of Pediatrics (2017-2018) and expansion to six additional departments (2018-2019), LEAD has now been GME-wide since 2019. More than 300 residents and fellows have participated in the program; 45 workshops have been created and presented at local, regional, and national conferences; and six articles have been published in MedEdPORTAL. We have also published on the creation, program evaluation, and outcomes (Powell et al. 2021) as well as a qualitative study on the impact of the program on UIM learners’ sense of belonging and professional identity formation (Yemane et al. 2024) as we believe it can serve as a model for other institutions to adopt. We supported The Ohio State [University’s] Department of Internal Medicine’s launch of the LEAD program in its pilot year, which was a success, and they have expanded the project going into year two. (Learn more about the LEAD Program: https://med.stanford.edu/odme/residents-and-fellows/lead.html.)
ACGME: How could others use your work as a model to become more diverse and inclusive? What advice do you give to GME leaders who are looking to do just that, but aren’t sure how to start?
Yemane/Rassbach: Many good things start with: a big idea + a passionate group of people = pilot. It's okay to start small, measure impact, and get some lessons learned before scaling. SCORE and LEAD both started as pilots, which were successful, and then we continued to iterate, scale, and build the case for additional resources. Everything's better with collaboration, so it’s key to identify people in your program or institution who have similar goals, and see how you can join forces for greater impact.
ACGME: Is there anything you would like to add that we haven’t asked about?
Yemane/Rassbach: Our residency program is truly honored to receive this recognition. Huge thanks to our wonderful residents, faculty and staff members, and leaders who have supported these efforts. We are very proud of the work we have done, and also know there is still a lot more to do. We are grateful to the ACGME for the creation of this award to recognize the importance of work supporting underrepresented physicians in medicine, and to Dr. Ross-Lee for her visionary leadership in this area.
Learn more about the ACGME’s Barbara Ross-Lee, DO Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award and nominate a deserving Sponsoring Institution, program, or organization for the 2026 Award – nominations are due by March 12, 2025.
Citations for Articles Referenced in this Interview:
Powell, Carmin, Lahia Yemane, Michelle Brooks, et al. 2021. “Outcomes from a Novel Graduate Medical Education Leadership Program in Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” Journal of Graduate Medical Education, 13(6), 774–784. https://doi.org/10.4300/JGME-D-21-00235.1.
Yemane, Lahia, Carmin Powell, Jeffrey Edwards, et al. 2024. “Underrepresented in Medicine Trainees’ Sense of Belonging and Professional Identity Formation after Participation in the Leadership Education in Advancing Diversity Program.” Academic Pediatrics, S1876-2859(24)00321-8. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acap.2024.08.003.