An open letter to SER members from the 2020-2021 Diversity & Inclusion committee

To SER members:

Last summer, we described the mission of our committee and our vision for diversity and inclusion within SER in American Journal of Epidemiology (https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/189/10/1049/5864887). We are reaching back out to you in this annual meeting edition of SERnews to report on What Have We Done for You Lately?  Suffice it to say, this has been quite the year. One year ago, we were all learning to adjust to the realities of the COVID-19 era. Since then, we have had to figure out new ways of moving forward. For our committee, this entailed new ways of advancing our mission to foster the diversity of our membership and working towards the engagement of all members.

Our committee members have been hard at work on a redesigned Diversity & Inclusion Survey that we plan to roll out prior to this year’s annual meeting. The results of this survey will be critical to our understanding of the diversity of our membership, members’ experiences at SER, and measuring our progress in enhancing the inclusiveness of our activities. This is where you can play a part in contributing to D&I. When you receive an invite to participate in the upcoming survey, please ACCEPT! Seeing that the 39% response rate of our first survey was less than we expected, we need to achieve better this time to obtain the fullest picture possible of members’ experiences. We are counting on each of you. The results of our first survey were reported in January 2020 (https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/189/10/998/5697299). We are eager to see how metrics of lived experience and inclusion have changed in the three years since the last survey was completed. We are also making plans for broad data sharing to maximize both dissemination of the results and active collaborations on data analysis.

Additionally, we have also advanced our mission through leading programming efforts related to D&I on several topics; we encourage you to visit (or revisit) these events in the SERlibrary:

The SERvisits program (https://epiresearch.org/ser-visits/) is one of our committee’s core programs. It sponsors events on cutting edge topics in our field at institutions that historically have been less represented at SER meetings, provides opportunities for SER faculty members to engage with students, and through the generous funding from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health provides travel scholarships for students at host institutions to attend our meetings. However, SERvisits were put on hold at the beginning of the pandemic, our committee has now developed expanded SERvirtualvisits, and looks forward to continuing the enthusiastic momentum seen in our first virtual SERvisit.

Finally, during the past year we also led the development of SER’s first Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement (https://epiresearch.org/about-us/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-statement/). SER’s executive committee formally adopted this statement last Fall, and since then our committee has been making plans for implementing the principles articulated in the statement through concrete actions. In the months ahead, we look forward to working with the full range of SER committees (https://epiresearch.org/committees/) to identify action steps that are relevant to all of SER’s activities.

As we sign off, we want to extend our sincere appreciation to our committee members who are completing their terms of service this year, and extend a warm welcome to the new committee members who are joining us for the next 3 years. We look forward to seeing you virtually at the numerous D&I-sponsored activities at SER-2021!

Sincerely,

Hoda S. Abdel Magid
Nadia Abuelezam
Amira Aker
Obafemi Babalola
Elizabeth DeVilbiss
Stephen Gilman
Jay Kaufman
David S. Lopez
Veronica E McSorley
Jamaica Robinson
On behalf of the Diversity & Inclusion Committee