Abstract
Responsiveness to societal needs is an expectation for academic institutions (medical schools and teaching hospitals) that encompasses their three missions – education, research and service to patients and populations. This paper presents a scholarly perspective that proposes practical courses of action for academic institutions to operationalise calls by the World Health Organization and others for medical education institutions to demonstrate societal responsiveness. We offer a pragmatic framework for institutional action to guide societal responsiveness initiatives in all domains of an institution’s academic mission. We point to the history of social accountability as a core role of academic institutions and how these early approaches provide a model for present-day actions and activities. We discuss the importance of engaging individuals and groups who benefit from institutional actions in the service of social accountability in co-determining optimal courses of action. We offer concrete recommendations in each domain of the academic mission to create a practical, institution-specific approach for societal responsiveness, shaped by the given organization’s mission and its role in addressing education, health care and research needs at the level(s) (local, regional or national) at which it operates. We discuss the local, national and global contexts in which individual institutions operate and how they create facilitators and barriers for institutions seeking to meet social responsiveness mandates. We close with discussing how focusing on institution-level priorities for societal responsiveness allows for meaningful actions in a range of settings within an increasingly complex and challenging environment in many regions around the globe.