Katherine Hyland

University of California San Francisco

What are your name and title/rank?

Katherine Hyland

Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics

How long have you been a member of ABE, and what attracted you to the organization?

Looking at your time with the association, what have you most enjoyed doing? What are you looking forward to?

Tell us more about your ABE conference contributions. If you aren't presenting, what are you most excited about engaging in?

At the last meeting in 2023, I co-facilitated a workshop on “Bringing Gender & Sex Equity and Inclusivity into your Classroom: A Framework for Health Professions Educators” along with my colleague Tracy Fulton and one of our amazing medical students Allison Gomez. In this workshop, we aimed to distinguish between the constructs of gender and sex, and develop awareness of the ways that health professions education (HPE) curricular materials my perpetuate gender- and sex-based oppression. We provided and applied a framework for gender & sex equity and inclusion to aid in improving educational materials and student-instructor experiences. An important outcome, in addition to raising awareness and providing tools, was to work with participants to develop strategies and concrete steps for implementing gender and sex inclusivity recommendations at participants’ institutions. The workshop was very well received, and in fact several people followed-up with us after the conference to seek guidance and to develop training sessions at their own institutions. It’s very rewarding to share topics we’re passionate about and have been working on at our own institution, and feel like we have benefited colleagues at other institutions and moved the HPE in important new directions.

Wearing my genetics hat, I’m also keen to work with those who teach biochemical and medical genetics and share current guidelines and resources, particularly around genetic and genomic testing and clinical applications. As an officer in APHMG for several years, currently President, I’ve appreciated our efforts to have joint sessions for both biochemistry and genetics educators at the meetings where we’ve had overlap. I look forward to continued opportunities to share resources and best practices between the two organizations for those who are involved with biochemistry and genetics education.

If people would like to follow you on social media (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc), what are your handles?

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What interesting things are you working on outside of the association right now? Research, presentations, hobbies, etc.

I'm part of a multi-institutional team through IAMSE, which includes several ABE members, that has been studying the professional identity formation of basic science medical educators (BSME). Its been very interesting to see how our colleagues came to this profession and their varied experiences. I am currently working with a group on a manuscript that focuses on the varied pathways to a BSME career. An important goal of this overall project is to raise awareness of the BSME career path and the need for support and early training opportunities.

Wearing my genetics hat, I'm also passionate about ensuring that both future and current clinicians are prepared to effectively incorporate genetics and genomics into their practice to best serve all patients. To that end, I have been leading an effort at my own institution to identify clinicians’ unmet genetics and genomics education needs, and collaborate with Genomic Champions (non-geneticist clinicians who use genomics in their practice and/or research) to operationalize our findings and facilitate educating clinicians in their specialty. I’m also engaged in many education and curriculum development projects at the national level, for both UME and CME. As a member of NHGRI’s Inter-Society Coordinating Committee for Practitioner Education in Genomics (ISCC-PEG), I have been working with the Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Genetic Testing working group to develop FAQs and a Point-of-Service algorithmic tool to guide Primary Care Physicians on incorporating a patient’s DTC test results into clinical care, which will be available on the NHGRI website.

I’m also committed to continue efforts to engage with and promote diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-oppression in medical education, medicine, and science. I'm particularly engaged with developing best practices for promoting gender inclusivity and an antiracist perspective in clinical genetics education.

As President of APHMG, I’m very excited about our many initiatives, including our DEI efforts and our partnership with ScholarRx. It's a wonderful opportunity for both APHMG and ABE to partner with ScholarRx to create robust, current, clinically-accurate educational materials that are freely available to all our members and anyone teaching/learning genetics and biochemistry. Its particularly important for these education materials to be available on the open-source Brick Exchange for under-resourced institutions and those without direct access to clinical geneticists.