June 18, 2020
Dear Colleagues,
AACN/ABCN leadership has taken some time to engage in thoughtful reflection regarding the recent events that have highlighted longstanding racial and cultural disparities. We are saddened and humbly recognize the inadequacy of words alone. Although we wish it were otherwise, we acknowledge our own complacency and complicity in the failings of our country. Yet, we cannot allow shame or fear to keep us from committing ourselves to bettering society, ourselves, and the institutions we support. So, with humility, we stand alongside our black and brown colleagues, patients, and neighbors in solidarity.
For our part, the biased and marginalizing system of “regular” neuropsychology versus “multicultural neuropsychology” must be dismantled. As one step towards structural change, starting in 2021, every CE offering through AACN will integrate learning objectives that address how the material is relevant in the context of our culturally, ethnically, racially, and linguistically diverse patient population.
We are further committed to challenging our organizations to enact substantive monetary, institutional, and structural changes towards racial progress, including:
- committing monetary resources, including grant funding, to support research and programs that specifically address the systemic and racist discrimination in healthcare that has long contributed to increased morbidity and mortality in Black, Latinx, and other communities of color,
- enacting procedural changes such that the leaders and governance boards of our organizations reflect the diversity found in the populations we serve, and
- radically altering neuropsychological curriculum and continuing education such that competency as a board-certified neuropsychologist requires awareness, sensitivity, and skills in working with individuals of all marginalized groups, including the racial legacies that continue to promote disparities among communities of color.
To the people of color in our neuropsychology community: we see you, we stand with you, and we are listening. We hope that all neuropsychologists will join us in a commitment to make real and lasting personal, professional, and institutional changes. We can and must do better and are committed to taking actions in the service of social justice.