Collaborating to Improve Skin of Color Education

Improving recognition of dermatologic diseases in dark skin types can be achieved in a few ways, but one of the most accessible methods is reviewing online resources. However, accuracy and reliability are necessary to ensure diseases are correctly identified. Nada Elbuluk, MD, MSc, FAAD, saw an opportunity to grow and promote an online resource that meets those needs.

“In dermatology, we talk a lot about how skin diseases can look different in darker skin vs lighter skin,” said Dr Elbuluk. “If a physician is not educated or trained on that, then they may miss a diagnosis completely, or they may underdiagnose disease severity in a patient.”

Dr Elbuluk is an associate professor in the department of dermatology, the founder and director of the University of Southern California (USC) Skin of Color Center and Pigmentary Disorders Clinic, and founder and director of the Dermatology Diversity and Inclusion Program at the USC Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles, CA. In addition to these responsibilities, she serves as the director of clinical impact for VisualDx, a clinical decision support system that combines images with a search function. As the director of clinical impact, Dr Elbuluk recognized the need to expand the specialty’s knowledge of diseases in dark color and helped create Project IMPACT.

“Project IMPACT came about because we were looking at the work we were doing at VisualDx in terms of health equity while we focus on improving knowledge gaps related to medical education. IMPACT actually is an acronym, and it stands for improving medicine's power to address care and treatment,” she explained. “The goal is basically to work together with other like-minded organizations and individuals to really move the needle in terms of health equity.”

Inaugural collaborators of Project IMPACT included the New England Journal of Medicine and the Skin of Color Society, and the American Academy of Dermatology has joined in the effort as well. Dr Elbuluk noted that a number of other collaborators have been added since then, including the American Medical Women's Association, the National Medical Association Dermatology Section, and the Association of Professors of Dermatology.

“I think in the last several years, and most recently, in the last year, with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a lot of looking inward about where the gaps are in our own field of dermatology and what we can be doing to improve health equity,” said Dr Elbuluk.

“We have seen more research and publications happening on things related to skin of color, as well as more discussion of increasing the diversity of our workforce. The dialogues are happening, but we still have a ways to go to see all of that translate into the change that is needed, but it's starting, which is important.”

Dr Elbuluk shared that Project IMPACT is expanding on those dialogues through its collaborations. “At VisualDx, we are doing educational work in terms of continuing to increase our diverse database of images, creating Kodachrome teaching slide sets and other resources, to really build upon what is already out there for improving those knowledge gaps for people. Our collaborators are doing great work as well to improve research efforts, increase recruitment of diverse populations into clinical trials, implicit bias training, among other arenas that are so important to health equity.”