Commentary
What are state medical boards working on? 1,500 pages of nothing but DEI
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It is perhaps common knowledge that DEI has fully infiltrated many state medical boards, committees, and commissions around the country. But what is less clear is how much time and work these boards are putting into pet DEI projects at the expense of other meaningful efforts.
Earlier this year, Do No Harm submitted a public records request for communications discussing diversity or DEI between the Missouri Board of Registration for the Healing Arts and the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB).
The response? More than 1,500 pages worth of material and work related to DEI. In fact, across these 1,500+ pages, the word “diversity” alone was mentioned nearly 500 times. And that’s just from a single state’s medical board—imagine the volume of correspondence related to DEI from all states medical boards.
Contained deep within these 1,500+ pages are several notable (and troubling) finds.
For example, a 2023 update to the FSMB “House of Delegates” includes a barrage of diversity-obsessed materials, such as new “justice fellowships” for “ensuring equity in measurement and assessment” complete with a “$30,000 stipend”, a heads-up for the upcoming “Equity in Measurement and Assessment Conference”, and much more.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. An interim report by the “FSMB Workgroup on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Medical Regulation and Patient Care” contains more than 30 pages on ways in which the entire medical establishment is inherently racist, with implicit biases that are in desperate need of correcting. But contained in the “proposed mitigation strategies” to counter these supposed structural inequities are:
- “Apply[ing] an equity lens in all application reviews” for licensure;
- “Consider[ing] bias training and education about Social Determinants of Health and health disparities” as potential testing requirements;
- “Adopt[ing] as policy that board composition should reflect the communities served” to guarantee racial concordance between medical boards and communities;
- “Mandat[ing] bias training and trauma informed education” for new board members;
- “Mandat[ing] minimum levels of diversity for membership on board committees”;
- “Creat[ing] [a] committee responsible for reviewing all policies and guidelines through equity lens”;
- And much more.
In other words, equity is so unbalanced that mandates in bias training, diversity quotas, committee reviews of policy, and racial concordance—which is equal to racial segregation—are the only solutions. Yet, this premise is entirely misguided, as research by Do No Harm found no meaningful correlation between the integration of racial concordance and improved outcomes for patients.
But perhaps these types of bizarre policy recommendations are to be expected from activists that consider racism to be “a leading cause of death and preventable harm” in the U.S. health care system, as noted in the working group’s final report. Yes, you read that right. The CDC must have missed “racism” when ranking causes of death in their data brief on mortality in the United States. Heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and more all made the cut—but not “racism”.
At the center of many of these controversial statements is Dr. Jeffery Carter, who last year was elected Chair of the FSMB and who also served as Chair of the above-mentioned FSMB Workgroup on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Medical Regulation and Patient Care. Dr. Carter just so happens to also be a member of the Missouri Board of Registration for the Healing Arts—the central subject of the public records request issued by Do No Harm, along with the FSMB.
Interestingly, it seems Dr. Carter has a history of filing lawsuits claiming discrimination in response to setbacks in his medical career. In 1995, he sued St. Louis University claiming discrimination after he was dismissed from the school’s general surgical residency program for poor performance. He lost at the trial and on appeal. In 2011, he sued Missouri Baptist Medical Center alleging discrimination after his failed bid to become the hospital’s chief anesthesiologist. Again, he lost at the trial and on appeal.
Now, after his round of failed discriminatory-based lawsuits, Dr. Carter is setting DEI medical policy for state medical boards in Missouri and around the country.
Imagine if Dr. Carter and his colleagues put as much time and effort into addressing medical developments, serious health conditions, or moral issues related to health care, as they did on DEI. The amount of work dedicated to sending and answering emails on woke medicine alone is staggering, given the more than 1,500 pages of correspondence from the records request. Every hour wasted on their obscure addiction to DEI is an hour that is not dedicated to legitimate issues in the medical community.
State medical boards are trusted with safeguarding licensing and credentialing for medical practices. The blatant disregard for their moral charge at the expense of woke politics is equal parts damaging and frightening. The sooner these boards are called out for their unhealthy fixation with DEI, the better.