Virginia Resurrects Bill Forcing Healthcare Professionals to Submit to Divisive Trainings 

Thanks to a new bill, Virginia could soon force medical professionals to sit through so-called “unconscious bias” trainings.

The bill, introduced by Democratic Delegate Cliff Hayes on January 3, would direct the state board of medicine to “require unconscious bias and cultural competency training as part of the continuing education requirements for renewal of licensure.”

This means that if medical professionals wish to be licensed in Virginia, they must undergo what often amounts to ideological programming that has no basis in established science.

The Virginia Legislature had already advanced a previous iteration of the bill in early 2024, but Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed the legislation. He instead proposed an alternative requirement that medical professionals “complete two hours of continuing learning activities that address maternal health care for populations of women that data indicate experience significantly greater than average maternal mortality.”

Yet lawmakers are plowing ahead with this legislation once again.

Specifically, the bill requires the first unconscious bias training to cover “unconscious racial bias affects care during pregnancy and the postpartum period.”

There is no solid evidence finding a causal link between unconscious bias/implicit bias (which is itself a dubious concept at best) and racial disparities in health outcomes. Additionally, the study of racism’s effects in public health is an area plagued by poor scholarship. 

For instance, a hugely influential 2020 study purported to show that the elevated infant mortality rate among black babies was partially reduced when black babies had black doctors rather than white doctors. Yet a commentary published in September 2024 debunked the results of the 2020 study by examining the same data and finding that, when controlling for low birth weights, the effect of black doctors treating black babies becomes statistically insignificant.

What’s more, the tests used to evaluate or identify implicit bias fail to meet widely-accepted standards of reliability and validity and have been found to be “poor predictors” of real-world bias and discrimination. Ohio State University psychology professor emeritus Hal Arkes described the test as “an extremely feeble predictor of behavior.”

And furthermore, there is no evidence that being treated by a physician of the same race improves one’s health outcomes. 

With these facts in mind, the notion that a state-mandated unconscious bias training would materially affect racial disparities in health outcomes strains credulity. 

But it’s not just that unconscious bias training is based on shoddy premises: it’s actively divisive. 

Asserting without evidence that individuals are implicitly prejudiced against other races breeds paranoia and creates unwarranted inhibitions among medical professionals just trying to do their job. 

Moreover, a study released by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab in November 2024 found that exposure to DEI trainings increased agreement with rhetoric from Adolf Hitler, and encouraged “punitive responses” to “imagined prejudice.”

And Virginia’s legislation would mandate the trainings leading to these negative consequences.

These requirements are not new: Do No Harm launched its own alternative implicit bias course to meet Michigan’s requirement that doctors and nurses submit to implicit bias training as a condition of their licensure.

But Virginia’s medical professionals deserve better. They should not be subjected to mandatory training that accuses them of racism and pushes unsupported concepts.