Commentary

Who Supports Race-Based Mandates? As It Turns Out, Family Medicine Organizations

  • By Do No Harm Staff
  • May 15, 2024

Race-based mandates may sound like long-abandoned antiquities of the pre-civil rights era. But one organization purporting to represent family medicine wants to roll back the clock.

In an email anonymously shared with Do No Harm, the Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors (AFMRD) details that they are “deeply concerned” regarding the “erasure” of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in medical institutions. What is that erasure? Recent legislative efforts across the country to defend equal treatment regardless of race. The email points to thirty pending bills which would “dismantle” DEI initiatives and specifically highlights seven anti-DEI bills that have been signed into law, as well as the federal EDUCATE Act.

Figure 1. From a May 7, 2024 email sent to AFMRD members.

These bills should be a cause for celebration. States like Florida, Utah, Texas, and more have worked to curtail the influence of DEI in colleges and universities (including medical institutions of higher education). These meaningful reforms protect students and faculty from loyalty oaths, mandatory diversity trainings, and other discriminatory policies. Meanwhile, the EDUCATE Act, sponsored by Congressman Greg Murphy of North Carolina, would rightly cut off federal funding to medical schools’ DEI programs.

But rather than celebrate these successes, the AFMRD is up in arms. In its latest email, the organization is urging members to take matters into their own hands by contacting legislators and taking to social media using the “#diversity” as the hashtag.

One of the resources linked in the AFMRD’s email is to the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) and their “Family Medicine DEI Advocacy Toolkit”. This so-called “toolkit” includes a map tracking these “deeply concerning” pieces of legislation, links to an online “advocacy course”, social media graphics, and more.

Figure 2. From the STFM Family Medicine DEI Advocacy Toolkit landing page.

STFM also decries the EDUCATE Act, noting that the act would “ban race-based mandates at medical schools and accrediting institutions”—as if ending racist quotas and policies would harm healthcare instead of helping it.

These organizations are hardly the first entities to embrace divisive DEI concepts. From osteopathic medicine to psychiatry, organizations representing members in countless medical subfields have embraced identity politics in healthcare at the expense of individual merit and evidence-based healthcare.

However, the AFMRD and STFM’s call to political action to salvage DEI in medicine represents a much deeper commitment.

What if these medical organizations actually focused on, say, medicine? What progress could be made with this time and energy if it were devoted to research, evaluations of new practices, or moral and ethical considerations?

It is difficult to comprehend how, in the 21st century, it is controversial to claim that racial discrimination in medicine is a bad idea. But it is.

The sooner these organizations are called out for their clearly harmful views and actions, the better it will be for medical providers and patients alike.