University Hospitals of Cleveland Pushes ‘Reparations’ in DEI Trainings

Would you want your hospital inculcating staff members on the benefits of racially discriminatory policies?

Do No Harm obtained video recordings of four virtual trainings held for staff members at University Hospitals of Cleveland this summer. The trainings featured discussions on topics such as implicit bias that are staples of DEI discussions.

But one particular training, featuring Cleveland’s Director of Public Health David Margolius, extolled the virtues of racial reparations, with Margolius recommending reparations as a way of closing the racial gap in health outcomes.

“The problems that we’re facing all stem from the wealth gap between predominantly white families and predominantly black families,” he said, referencing a talk he gave in 2023 that explored his reparations activism in greater detail. “So, the way to fix that is reparations.”

“Ultimately, if we want to directly address this [disparity], it’s reparations,” he added.

Additionally, in the 2023 talk, Margolius argued the best way to sell reparations to the public (who by and large are not fans of racially discriminatory policies) is to frame it as a “public health intervention.”

“I think we need to continue to communicate it as a public health intervention to make it more mainstream,” he said.

Ideastream Public Media reported in August 2023 that Margolius would continue to advocate for reparations.

“It’s a proven public health intervention that we should continue to advocate for on a national level,” he said.

A more cynical viewer might interpret Margolius’ comments as smuggling an unpopular political agenda into the mainstream through a more socially-acceptable veneer.

This is part of a larger issue in the healthcare field, especially among medical associations and educational institutions, in which the lines between “health” and “politics” are increasingly blurred. Do No Harm’s latest research project, Outside Their Lane: Mission Creep in Medical Specialty Societies, demonstrated how medical specialty societies use their expertise to take positions on hot-button social and political issues, often cloaking their activism under the guise of advocacy for “public health.” 

This training is in a similar vein: openly pushing a particular public policy prescription (that happens to be racially discriminatory, for what it’s worth) under the guise of public health education.

Regardless of whether these arguments have merit, they belong in the political sphere.

DEI trainings, especially in the public health sector, have always been thinly-veiled excuses to platform a political agenda.

University Hospitals should reconsider its priorities and abandon DEI: the medical field deserves better.