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During a time of global pandemic and rampant spread of misinformation, many question where they can  turn for reliable and trustworthy guidance when it comes to their health. Recent surveys show trust declining precipitously across wide swaths of the public, foreshadowing significant challenges in our ability to bring the pandemic to an end so that we might return to life as we had known it.

It’s perhaps never been more essential to rebuild patient trust in physicians and the health care system.  That’s why the ABIM Foundation has launched a national effort to highlight exemplary practices and stories from health care professionals that show how to enhance trust in the delivery of health care across the country.

Below is a roundup of some of the opportunities pursued in order to bring these issues to the forefront of a nationwide conversation.


2020 ABIM Foundation Forum: Building Trust & Health Equity

The ABIM Foundation hosted its annual Forum in August 2020, with the goals heavily influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. For the third consecutive year, the Forum focused on issues of trust in health care. This year’s discussion centered on the severe health equity challenges that the pandemic—and its disproportionate impact on people of color—laid bare. Conversations were both heart-breaking and heartening as participants shared openly about personal experiences they’ve faced, and potential strategies for addressing disparities.

Hear from Kellan Baker, MPH, MA, Centennial Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, sharing his story of relating to the health care system as a transgender man.

Launching BuildingTrust.org

Building Trust is an ABIM Foundation initiative that aims to elevate the importance of trust as an essential organizing principle to guide operations and improvements in health care. A new website, BuildingTrust.org, serves as a springboard for health care professionals to learn about and share practices that build trust from others in the medical community, from institutions to teams to individuals. Find out how you can join the Building Trust vanguard community, and watch frontline physicians and leading experts discuss building trust in health care.

Trust Matters in the Media

ABIM and the ABIM Foundation’s physician leaders are passionate about what they do and have a wealth of personal experience from which to draw upon when exploring the intersection of medicine and trust.  That’s why national and trade media have called upon their expertise to discuss trust, the pandemic and racial disparities. Here are just a few places ABIM and ABIMF leaders have been featured.

STAT News: Seeing the Rose Garden superspreader convocation as a ‘never event’

“Every time physicians permit institutions to warp the science they use to guide their care for patients, whether it is policies of insurance companies or hospital systems or the White House, trust in all physicians is eroded. As we try to navigate our way through this pandemic, trust is one of the most precious commodities we have.”

USP- Trust TV

The Doctor’s Channel

Washington Post: Anti-vaccination leaders fuel black mistrust of medical establishment as covid-19 kills people of color

“On Thursday, the president of the American Board of Internal Medicine and others urged the federal government to enlist doctors and scientists of color to build confidence in a coronavirus vaccine in minority communities. In a letter to Moncef Slaoui, who is heading up the Trump administration’s coronavirus vaccine development program, they said health officials should ‘take the trust gap seriously as a problem to be addressed, every bit as substantive as having enough syringes and needles with which to deliver a vaccine.'”