American Physical Therapy Association Operates Discriminatory Scholarship Programs

The American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) is actively discriminating against its own members.

As part of the APTA’s commitment to diversity, the organization hands out monetary awards that are only available to minority APTA members.

The APTA’s Faculty Development Scholarship Award, for example, provides a monetary award to “minority faculty pursuing a postprofessional doctoral degree.”

To qualify for the award, applicants must be “members of one of the following racial/ethnic minority groups: African American or Black, Asian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, American Indian/Alaska Native and Hispanic/Latino.”

The APTA operates similar programs for minority students, the PT Student and PTA Student Awards. These awards also require applicants to be members of the aforementioned racial groups to receive the award.

These discriminatory programs are funded by the APTA’s Minority Scholarship Fund and are symptomatic of a larger institutional commitment to DEI. 

For instance, the APTA’s continuing education content is replete with lessons in DEI principles and strategies for physical therapists to advance DEI in their workplaces.

The APTA’s “DEI Certificate” includes six courses that together instruct APTA members “about bias, microaggressions, population health, the Americans with Disabilities Act, treating a gender diverse population, and improving diversity in the physical therapy profession.”

Organization-wide, the APTA has in the past few years taken several actions toward strengthening its adherence to DEI.

In an infographic included in the APTA’s magazine in October 2022, the organization boasted of the steps it has taken to improve diversity in its ranks while advancing DEI in the “association, profession, and society” more broadly. These steps included 21 APTA sections and chapters establishing their own DEI committees, doubling the number of DEI continuing education courses available, and expanding the APTA’s PT Moves Me Ambassador Program.

That program is a recruiting initiative by the APTA designed to “[i]ncrease diversity” within the physical therapy profession.

The APTA also surveys the extent to which its members and the profession at large are advancing DEI through its “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Activity Report Form for the Physical Therapy Community.” 

The form asks respondents to detail their involvement with DEI initiatives and their own personal work advancing DEI; one question even asks the respondents to list their primary audiences for DEI efforts, with options including “Infants and toddlers” and “Preschoolers.”

The APTA also encourages its members to involve themselves with outside groups who are actively promoting DEI in other fields or who are outright political actors. The organization’s DEI Toolkit includes a list of DEI and “anti-racism” resources, groups, and initiatives with whom their members should engage.

This includes White Coats for Black Lives, a medical student organization that, as Do No Harm previously reported, defended individuals who praised the October 7th terrorist attacks on Israel.

It’s clear the APTA envisions itself as a political actor, and uses its position with the physical therapy profession to advance a radical racial ideology through its initiatives, courses, and scholarships.

No healthcare organization should engage in racial discrimination. This is a horrific example to set for the physical therapy profession, and the APTA should reconsider its ideological commitments at once.