Dr. Brenda Bogaert -  University of Lausanne and Lausanne University Hospital, Lausanne (Switzerland)
Dr. John Barugahare - Makerere University, Kampala (Uganda)

Dr. Beatrice Akala -  University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (South Africa)

Our panel corresponds to Hub 2 – Society, Culture, Heritage and explores how medical education systems can foster more inclusive, multilingual, and societies. With its focus on healthcare, it also furthers Hub 3. 
In the context of increasing social and cultural diversification in global societies, one of the most important issues that educators need to address today is racism in health care. However, this subject is usually ignored or under-discussed. 
Combating this injustice requires a variety of perspectives - especially from different contexts and countries. 
As a first step, a moderated discussion was organized in September 2025 in Hannover, Germany, with 28 participants from around Europe on racism in biomedicine. 

Strategies identified for medical education included having dedicated peer support, building awareness of racism in medical history, incorporating lived experience, and targeted faculty recruitment to ensure greater diversity. This second panel discussion, planned in Casablanca with CIVIS partners at the University of the Witwatersrand and Makerere University, will widen the topic to the global audience of CIVIS partners from Africa. It will provide an opportunity to enlarge this debate, to better understand critical pedagogies that may be mobilised both in specific contexts/countries and worldwide (such as Ubuntu philosophies which emphasize our shared humanity and interdependence) to overcome racism in healthcare and society as a large. 

The structure of panel discussion will be as follows: 

• Presentation of results from European workshop - University of Lausanne 

• Insights on anti-racist initiatives from the University of the Witwatersrand and Makerere University 

• Audience discussion 

Discussion questions for the audience: 

• What is our role as educators? 

• What are anti-racist initiatives in your universities? 

• How can we improve education to work toward more just, equitable societies? 

• How can we overcome barriers to anti-racism work?