The Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity (EDI) team attended the Advance HE Equality Charters Awards in Liverpool on Wednesday 6 March, after achieving the Athena Swan gold award in December 2023. 

The award is for BSMS' commitment to gender equality in higher education and research, with the submission led by Dr Ceri Butler, Senior Lecturer in Medical Education; Suze Cruttwell, EDI Project Officer; and Ellen Thomas, Assistant Data Analyst, with support from Dr Elaney Youssef, Lecturer in Medical Education.

The award ceremony was part of Advance HE's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Conference which featured a range of talks and workshops from institutions across the UK with a focus on how to shape the future of EDI within Higher Education. The team were one of ten institutional and departmental gold awards given on the night.

Ceri Butler and Suze Cruttwell said: “Achieving our Gold Award has been a huge recognition of all the work that has happened and continues to happen across the whole medical school. We approached the submission through a wider lens incorporating the intersectional inequalities across gender, ethnicity, disability and other relevant protected characteristics. We recognise that this award is a huge collective achievement and we are looking forward to implementing our gold action plan throughout the school over the next five years to ensure that BSMS remains inclusive and justice-oriented.”    

The Athena Swan submission is a review of the school's EDI work over the past five years with a specific focus on gender including case studies of best practice and beacon activities across BSMS. Case studies include Dr Chi Eziefula's work in menstrual health, Prof Claire Smith's EDI work in anatomy and Dr Duncan Shrewsbury's work on gendered role models and bystander training as well as the development of BSMS' gender equality policies and EDI campaigns. 

View the redacted BSMS Athena Swan gold submission here >