Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world.

–Nelson Mandela

The Office of Education is committed to supporting the mission of improved diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within the AUA through programming and content creation across a variety of different platforms.

The AUAUniversity podcast series is one of our most accessible educational delivery mechanisms to connect with our membership.¹ Over the past year, we have successfully engaged with experts within and outside of urology to tackle a wide spectrum of topics. Highlighted below are the podcasts released over the past year within the DEI initiative, and I encourage you to take some time to listen to this outstanding content.

• Health Equities and Variations in Advanced Prostate Cancer Care
• Surgical Implications for LGBTQ Patients
• Cultural Barriers for Ethnic Minorities
• Advancing Equitable Opportunities for Recruitment of Diverse Patients to Clinical Trials
• Financial Toxicity as Drugs Move Earlier Into Treatment Paradigm and How This Relates to Disparities in Treatment Patterns
• Addressing Disparities and Variations in Care in Genitourinary Oncology
• Insight Into Race, Shared Decision-making, and the Impact on Access to Quality Care
• Improving Racial Disparities in Treatment Outcomes
• How Can We Improve Shared Decision-making from a Prostate Cancer Survivor’s Perspective?

The Annual Meeting provides a forum for course offerings promoting engagement with thought leaders and dissemination of ideas. Importantly, many courses are now available as on-demand webcasts, thereby allowing access even after the meeting is complete. We continue to expand our courses specifically focusing on DEI while encouraging all course directors to consider these important themes even as they refine existing courses. Highlighted below are relevant courses from the prior 2022 meeting and upcoming 2023 Annual Meeting.

• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Urology, What Do We Need to Know? (2022, 2023)
• Advancing Gender Equity in Urology: Allyship for Men and Advocacy for Women (2022, 2023)
• Engaging Patients and Communities in Urological Research (2023)

Over the past year, the Office of Education has worked with key AUA members on several DEI initiatives with longitudinal goals. Highlighted below is some of the work in these domains.

• Health Equity Variations in Care
  • Steering committee and membership survey
  • Focused interview
  • Creation of infographics
  • Resources highlighting best practices
• Advancing Women in Urology
  • Steering committee, think tank, and membership survey
  • Live webinar, on-demand webcast, and podcast series
• Shared Decision-making and Engaging Disparities in Prostate Cancer Care
  • Live webinar and on-demand webcast
  • Interactive virtual workshop
  • Clinical problem solving (CPS) protocol
  • Podcast series

The Office of Education is comprised of 7 different committees, all of which have a focus on integrating DEI concepts into their respective programming and content. It would be lengthy to highlight all such efforts, but I would like to give a flavor of the work being done. A critical focus for our medical student committee (led by Seth Cohen, MD) is development of content and programming that educates and engages future potential colleagues. An inaugural Transgender and Gender Diverse Patient Urological Care Chapter,² authored by Adam Schneider, BS and Paul Chung, MD, was recently released as part of the AUA Medical Student Curriculum. Importantly, this content is wholly applicable not only for medical students, but for residents and physicians in practice as well. The medical student committee also recently hosted a fantastic webinar on “Optimizing Urology Research Productivity as a Medical Student,”³ which was led by Marisa Clifton, MD and Adam Weiner, MD, and hosted a diverse spectrum of urology faculty spanning gender and race.

Admittedly, what I have shared with you is simply a snapshot at this particular time. These efforts will continue to grow and expand, and I look forward to future opportunities to share progress being made within the Office of Education. Furthermore, I encourage any of you to reach out with thoughts, comments, and insight to education@auanet.org. There is always more to be done, and feedback is, of course, welcome.