Commentary

Medical licensing & regulation org takes its politics to North Carolina

  • By Do No Harm Staff
  • July 8, 2024

DEI is not a foreign concept to the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB). The organization, which is responsible for many of the licensing and regulatory processes for medical professionals across the country, has repeatedly endorsed woke ideas under the guise of medical “advocacy”.

For example, in 2021, the FSMB issued a statement wholly affirming its allegiance to DEI as part of an effort to address “systemic racism and inequity”. The statement highlighted the formation of a Task Force on Health Equity and Medical Regulation and a symposium on Health Equity and Medical Regulation. And in 2023, the FSMB published a final report of its Workgroup on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Medical Regulation in Patient Care. The report called for, among other reforms, creating a DEI-based Continuing Medical Education, which would astonishingly require physicians to engage in implicit bias training and evaluations on their adherence to DEI as part of their continuing education requirements.

Put simply, the FSMB is as woke as it gets.

Perhaps it is of no surprise that the FMSB has pushed its commitment to DEI down to the state level. As part of an effort to investigate this, Do No Harm issued a series of public records requests to select states in response to a survey put out by the FSMB. The survey included nine questions solely dedicated to DEI—roughly one-fifth of the entire survey. These questions include:

  • “What priority level does your board assign to diversity, equity and inclusion in the ways in which it regulates the profession of medicine?”
  • “Within the past 12 months, has your board made any public or internal statements about diversity, equity and inclusion?”
  • And more.

A response received by Do No Harm from the North Carolina Medical Board indicated that they ranked DEI as a “10” on a scale of “0 to 10” in terms of importance. That’s a higher score than legitimate medical policies and issues, such as telemedicine, interstate medical licensure compact, and more. North Carolina’s responses also indicated it has published both internal and external statements related to DEI and places a high priority on DEI in the way it regulates medicine.

Figure 1. From the NC 2022 FSMB State Board Survey, p. 3.

Figure 2. From the NC 2022 FSMB State Board Survey, p. 11.

North Carolina’s enthusiastic responses to questions relating to DEI are echoed in its own Board’s actions, such as the creation of a special working group dedicated to “diversity and inclusion”.

North Carolina has been a critical battleground in the fight against the influence of DEI in medicine. For example, in 2023, the North Carolina Legislature passed a bill that protected the free speech of medical educators and prohibited implicit bias training. Although the bill was vetoed by Governor Roy Cooper, the veto was successfully overridden by the Legislature.

This legislation was critical, as North Carolina’s institutions of higher education have come under fire time and time again for embracing divisive concepts inspired by DEI. Now, based on the results of the FSMB survey, its state medical board has all-but-admitted that DEI plays a crucial role in the Board’s policies and procedures.

(Of course, this is all somewhat ironic, given that the North Carolina Medical Board’s members are both majority white and majority male—demonstrating a lack of willingness to embody the DEI positions that it claims to embrace.)

North Carolina is just one of many states that has undoubtedly signed on to the FSMB’s controversial policies. Unsurprisingly, the high degree of importance the state’s medical authorities place on DEI has resulted in numerous instances of questionable practices at its medical colleges and universities. Indeed, there is no evidence at all that DEI benefits any patients. The role of the state medical board is to guarantee the highest quality of healthcare for the community. The DEI agenda does nothing for that goal. The sooner other state medical boards demonstrate transparency about how they’re embracing DEI, the quicker physicians and other medical professionals can push back against them.