{"id":130081,"date":"2025-01-30T17:49:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T22:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/?post_type=bu-article&p=130081"},"modified":"2025-11-09T11:36:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T16:36:27","slug":"annual-martin-luther-king-lecture-empowers-trainees-to-be-agents-of-change","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/news-events\/articles\/2025\/annual-martin-luther-king-lecture-empowers-trainees-to-be-agents-of-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Annual Martin Luther King Lecture Empowers Trainees to be Agents of Change"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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Held on Tuesday, Jan. 21, the 2025 Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture featured rising fourth-year medical student Neil Singh Bedi<\/a> discussing \u201cActionable Steps for Creating Change: Empowering Trainees and Beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bedi, a Zuckerman Fellow<\/a> at Harvard University\u2019s John F. Kennedy School of Government Center for Public Leadership, is pursuing a Master of Public Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His presentation before an audience of approximately 70 students, faculty and staff focused on how all people within healthcare systems \u2013 whether they are trainees or seasoned professionals \u2013 can effect meaningful change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In introducing Bedi, Medical School Dean and Medical Campus Provost Karen Antman<\/a>, MD, noted the close ties between King and BU, his alma mater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDr. King led a group of individuals who believed that the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights applied to all Americans, and this academic medical center has been committed to high quality health care-for-all for a century-and-a-half, including social structures required for physical and mental health like housing, a healthy diet, education and more,\u201d said Antman. \u201cWe can’t have a healthy population without access to the things that actually allow you to thrive and make progress.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Students, faculty and staff separated into groups to discuss how they can bring about changes in health care. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bedi spoke of the hopeless resignation he hears from his colleagues \u2013 that they feel it\u2019s not possible for an individual person working within a healthcare system to create change. He described the nature of systems-thinking, that systems are constantly changing and those working in them are part of that change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCentral to all\u2026the important social progress we\u2019ve seen in the last couple of centuries is one simple idea: that individual people have the capacity to change systems,\u201d said Bedi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some, said Bedi, might say that medical school is hard enough without rocking the boat; that it\u2019s not their mission to be agents of change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut when we look at the systems that we have today, we hold the people who designed them 20 years, 50 years ago\u2026accountable,\u201d he said. \u201cTwenty, 50 years into the future, we are the ones who are going to be held responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bedi went on to describe a seven-step process for creating change, drawn from principles in his work across climate and health, health equity and human rights initiatives. He explained this theoretical framework with a real-world case study describing recent efforts by him and a group of his fellow medical students and faculty mentors to work with Boston Medical Center to curtail the practice by correctional authorities of leaving terminally ill prisoners in shackles right up to death, by recommending exceptions to correctional authorities for patients who posed no risk to themselves or others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe weren\u2019t going to overhaul the entire corrections system\u2026but we knew that our objective from Day One was that no patient should die in shackles,\u201d he said. They assembled a team of medical students and some faculty mentors and formed the Stop Shackling Patients Coalition<\/a>. They found the problem was entrenched, a policy handed down by correctional officers that, until a recent national advocacy campaign that led to legislative change, saw pregnant prisoners giving birth while chained to their beds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In bringing interested parties to the table, Bedi\u2019s team found it was important to include opposing voices. \u201cSometimes, you\u2019ll be pleasantly surprised that the people who might philosophically disagree with you actually support what you\u2019re trying to do,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is no path forward in the American healthcare system that doesn\u2019t include all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe reason they are called entrenched practices is that things have been done again and again and again until someone comes along to change them,\u201d Bedi said. And with new policies and protocols, comes the next critical step of implementing, sustaining and sharing the change beyond one\u2019s own institution. \u201cYou have to make sure that whatever change you make, that you do it again and again until it becomes a part of the institution\u2019s memory,\u201d Bedi said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the talk, he emphasized the unique role that trainees have in serving as agents of change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey are our systems to inherit,\u201d Bedi said. \u201cAnd as we begin to change our systems to do better and be better, we will come remarkably closer to a world, where all people can truly, be well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recording of Bedi\u2019s lecture is available here<\/a><\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Medical students, faculty and staff reminded that individuals can affect meaningful change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":133657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"Events","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[383,357,358],"bu-publication":[367],"medicine-article-category":[],"medicine-topic":[],"news-article-category":[384],"news-topic":[],"bu_edition":[390],"media_type":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/130081"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130081"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/130081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133656,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/130081\/revisions\/133656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130081"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=130081"},{"taxonomy":"medicine-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/medicine-article-category?post=130081"},{"taxonomy":"medicine-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/medicine-topic?post=130081"},{"taxonomy":"news-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-article-category?post=130081"},{"taxonomy":"news-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-topic?post=130081"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=130081"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=130081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}