Commentary

Family Medicine Education Consortium ‘Anchored’ in Radical Critical Race Theory

  • By Do No Harm Staff
  • December 8, 2023

The “host committee” of Family Medicine Education Consortium, Inc.’s (FMEC) 2023 annual meeting program set the tone for its conference by announcing the practice of family medicine is now “anchored in the biopsychosocial model of care that promotes high quality, equitable care” – woke-speak for Critical Race Theory (CRT)-inspired diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology.

“Through the telescopes that we use in family medicine, we focus on individuals and their health conditions,” the host committee continued, but then explained its odd view that the medical care a patient requires will vary according to that patient’s social needs.

“We change lenses to see our patients as they need us to, interpreting health care needs in the context of their resources and communities in which they live,” the committee stated.

Do No Harm obtained documents and screenshots related to the FMEC meeting held October 13-15 in Providence, Rhode Island.

One lecture discussion during the meeting was advertised in print to conference attendees (see page 42 of the program) with a key misspelling in the title – which apparently no one picked up prior to publication.

The description of the lecture, delivered by Andria Matthews, M.D. and Gian Grant-McGarvey, M.D., for “Infusing Anti-Rascist [sic] Objectives into Medical School Curriculum” taught attendees how to incorporate CRT tenets into medical school curricula:

As part of the Academic Family Medicine Antiracism Learning Collaborative of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM), Dr. Matthews, Dr. Grant-McGarvey and the UCONN School of Medicine Student Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee have worked collaboratively to incorporate anti-racist objectives into the UCONN Medical School curriculum and evaluate student and faculty comfort with learning and teaching anti-racist content. Dr. Matthews and Dr. Grant-McGarvey will share learnings from the project, including how they developed anti-racist content, incorporated medical student feedback, supported faculty in increasing comfort with discussions about race and racism and evaluated progress in these areas.

Figure 1. Session offered at the 2023 FMEC Conference (October 15, 2023).

Do No Harm obtained additional screenshots of descriptions of other FMEC meeting workshops, including “Improving DEI in Residency Recruitment: A Scoping Review,” a presentation that championed the “health equity” narrative that claims “systemic racism” and “oppression” prevent minority individuals from obtaining access to adequate health care. According to the radical dogma, if there are more healthcare providers from “marginalized” identity groups, more patients from these same minority groups will obtain higher quality health care.

“Many persons in the United States do not see their racial, ethnic, or gender identity reflected in the physicians who care for them,” the session description read and then expressed disappointment that “[d]espite increased interest in diversifying the US physician workforce, recruiting diverse residency classes remains challenging for many programs.”

The workshop featured results of a “scoping review to understand the current evidence base” regarding the incorporation of DEI practices into residency program application processes – all to ensure that future practicing doctors are members of certain racial, ethnic, and sexuality political identities.

FMEC’s promotion of radical gender ideology was also evident in its conference workshop titled “Incorporating Lactation into Family Medicine Residency Curriculum.”

Swapping out the biologically-based term “breastfeeding” for the gender-neutral “chestfeeding,” FMEC’s description lauded “the profound benefits of chestfeeding,” and advocated for “having a lactation curriculum in Family Medicine residency” in order to enhance pediatric and maternal health curricula.

Figure 2. Sessions offered at the 2023 FMEC Conference (October 14, 2023).

Yet another FMEC workshop was titled “Anti-Racism Community Collaborative in Healthcare (ARCCH): Addressing Systemic Racism in Healthcare Through Storytelling and Dialogue Between Providers and Community.”

Figure 3. Session offered at the 2023 FMEC Conference (October 14, 2023).

Documents from the FMEC meeting also show Kristina Johnson, M.D. and Stephanie Miller, M.D. of Forbes Family Medicine Residency Program presented a demonstration of a “lecture-discussion” used for interns during orientation of the CRT-inspired tenet of “racial health disparities,” which the presenters defined as “a preventable difference in health between racial groups.”

Johnson and Miller, however, did not stop at racial disparities. They went on to claim that “gender, religion, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and physical disability” can also be tied to health disparities.

The presenters provided a quote from Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, that claims race is not a “biological or genetic reality,” but a social construct.

The materials indicate the purpose of the presentation was to encourage doctors to become both social workers and political activists for their patients’ social causes.

Figure 4. From “Hesitant to Teach About Racial Health Disparities? Start Here!” by Johnson and Miller at FMEC 2023.

“A person’s health is heavily influenced by the social determinants of health – which occur outside of the health care setting,” the document read. “Our goal is to empower family physicians to advocate for changes outside of the clinical space to improve the health of their communities.”

While CRT tenets are currently being taught in U.S. medical schools, the fact is there is no evidence to support the claim the so-called “social determinants of health” (SDoH) are the causes of health disparities.

In a piece at City Journal in September, Do No Harm Chairman Stanley Goldfarb, M.D. observed that the central message of a 2017 report on the subject from the National Academy of Medicine was: “no one should attribute any health-care disparities to individuals’ self-determined actions,” and that it’s time to reject the “decontextualized, biomedical framework.”

The SDoH trend in medicine is already embedded in medical school curricula, but “activists want to go further,” Goldfarb wrote, asserting, however, such a vision of doctors as social workers and political activists is “profoundly flawed” and “will only lead to further degradation of our health-care system.”

“Worst of all, it will not do anything to improve the well-being of patients or correct disparities in health outcomes,” he added. “In fact, it is far more likely to worsen patient suffering, since patients will increasingly deal with doctors trained to be political activists instead of true medical professionals.”