Project ARIISE: Addressing Racial Inequities through Interprofessional Simulation and Experiential Learning was created by the University of Utah, School of Medicine’s LIFT Simulation Design Lab, in collaboration with the Department of Educational Psychology. It is funded by a Board Grant from the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, which was established in 1930 to improve the education of health professionals.

Project ARIISE’s interprofessional learning program aims to improve patient care by training faculty, residents, fellows, and students to recognize their bias and repair relationships through courageous conversations and respectful dialogue. Leveraging the power of simulation and experiential learning, the project equips learners to address the multilayered dimensions of implicit bias and how it affects maternal healthcare quality and outcomes.

Project ARIISE places the patient experience at the center of the learning. Through community storytelling circles and videorecorded personal narratives, the women of color in our community offer messages of pain and hope and a call to action to all providers. Their stories are the foundation of the activities presented in this manual.