Application period opens for 2019 Gold Humanism Scholars at the Harvard Macy Institute

Note: The call for 2019 applications has now closed. Read more about Harvard Macy Institute 2019 Program for Educators.

The Arnold P. Gold Foundation is pleased to announce that it will again be sponsoring partial scholarships of $5,000 for Gold Humanism Scholars at the Harvard Macy Institute 2019 Program for Educators. The deadline is July 20, 2018.

Harvard Macy Institute sealThe Arnold P. Gold Foundation champions the human connection in healthcare. The nonprofit organization engage schools and their students, health systems, companies, and individual clinicians in the joy and meaning of humanistic healthcare, so that patients and their families can be partners in collaborative, compassionate and scientifically excellent care.

Through the Gold Humanism Scholars program, The Gold Foundation supports health profession educators who are developing and enhancing projects focused on achieving humanistic patient care that can be replicated across a variety of hospital or other healthcare settings.

The Harvard Macy Institute Program for Educators is a collaborative and dynamic faculty development opportunity that brings together a cohort of faculty members for two sessions, in January and in May, to work on projects that are designed to further humanistic practice in their home settings, and hone educator skills in implementing change in higher education successfully.

The 2018 Gold Humanism Scholars tackled such projects as building empathic communication and resilience skills into a new, physician assistant curriculum, developing cultural competency training to improve resident communication, and working on a Health Equity and Advocacy Training (HEAT) curriculum for clinical learning.

“We’ve been thrilled with the past projects that Gold Humanism Scholars have created and, with the help of their sessions at the Harvard Macy Institute, refined and prepared for implementation,” said Elizabeth Cleek, PsyD, Chief Program Officer. “We look forward to reading the applications for the 2019 Gold Humanism Scholarships and welcoming change agents who are passionate about advancing humanistic patient care.”

Applicants must be faculty members from an accredited school of medicine, nursing and/or other allied health profession in the U.S. or Canada (not open to trainees). Applicants should be recognized at their institution for their commitment to humanistic health professions education.

The Gold Foundation is most interested in supporting health-profession education projects that cultivate humanism — compassionate, collaborative and scientifically excellent care — and:

  1. Address systems-wide change, e.g. through projects that facilitate effective interpersonal communication skills and professionalism;
  2. Are longitudinal, ideally encompassing more than one year of training;
  3. Integrate specialties and disciplines within healthcare, and between healthcare professions;
  4. Are required (vs. elective);
  5. Contribute to best practices in the education of future caregivers (potential for scalability and/or replicability);
  6. Provide evidence of support by the home institution.

Gold Scholars will be required to submit a final report to the Gold Foundation; and may be asked to present the project to the Gold Foundation Board of Trustees and/or at select Gold Foundation health professions forums.

The Gold Foundation will provide, through a restricted grant to the applicant’s institution, a scholarship of $5,000 toward tuition at the Harvard Macy Institute’s 2019 Program for Educators. Full tuition to the program is $6,100, and travel/lodging is additional. The applicant will be responsible for securing additional funds to cover the remaining expenses.

The Gold Foundation intends to notify applicants of final decisions approximately 2 weeks prior to the Harvard Macy Institute’s application deadline of September 7th so that any applicant not selected as a Gold Scholar who still wishes to apply to the Harvard Macy Program for Educators  will have time to do so.

All applicants will need to submit a separate application to the HMI Program for Educators in Health Professions through the HMI website.

Applications must be submitted electronically by July 20, 2018. Full directions for application can be found here.

Please direct all inquiries to:

Ann Bruder
Director of Program Initiatives
The Arnold P. Gold Foundation
abruder@gold-foundation.org