Emergency Medicine

Eugenia C. South, MD MS

Department of Emergency Medicine

Vice Chair for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity

Dr. South is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, the Faculty Director of the Urban Health Lab, and the inaugural Vice Chair for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity in the Department of Emergency Medicine. Dr. South’s overarching goal as vice chair is to infuse equity and antiracism principles into all mission areas including clinical operations, research, and education missions of the department. She works closely with departmental leadership and other vice chairs to achieve these goals. Specifically, year one will involve:

• Establishing the current state of inclusion, diversity, equity, and antiracism (IDEA) in the department including a racial climate survey and several departmental townhall
• Developing IDEA accountability structures for departmental leaders
• Increase ED workforce diversity through targeted recruitment
• Critically evaluate the role of the law-enforcement in the ED

Year two will include a departmental wide strategic planning process that will be grounded in principles of equity and antiracism, as well as developing and implementing interventions based on lessons learned during year one.

Finally, as vice chair, Dr. South supports the ED Antiracism Task Force, made up of almost 100 staff, faculty, and trainees across 3 downtown Penn EDs. This group is focused on (a) mentorship and advancement of non-clinical staff including registration, technicians, administrative staff, and more, (b) including antiracism orientation for onboarding of all new hires, and (c) align departmental procurement practices with antiracism goals, including expand minority owned small business vendor list and preferentially do business with this group.