Applying quality and equity lenses to advance social accountability in medical education

Abstract

Social accountability has become a key driver of change within health professional education programs worldwide. Over the last two decades, there has been a growing number of frameworks, tools, and standards to help measure social accountability. This paper shares the experiences
and lessons learned from one of the institutions that participated in piloting the Institutional Self-Assessment Social Accountability Tool (ISAT). We argue that tools for measuring social accountability are valuable not only because they provide data but, more importantly, because they can embed a dialogic and critical reflective culture within institutions. We describe how the tool expanded our thinking about social accountability to advance it, including what constitutes socially accountable research and who and what fields contribute to this work. We argue that the tool encouraged collaborative critical reflexive practice and offered a process that was incorporated into institutional processes and activities, and simultaneously fostered intra-institutional cooperation. Finally, we contend that the application of quality and equity lenses offers sources of sustainability to advance social accountability in medical education as they encourage the prioritization of social accountability processes to achieve desired outcomes.