Motor City Malfeasance: Henry Ford Health Operates Discriminatory Scholarships

Earlier this week, Detroit hospital system Henry Ford Health was the subject of a scathing report by nonprofit watchdog Consumers’ Research highlighting the hospital’s DEI policies.

The report identified numerous instances of DEI at Henry Ford Health, including the use of “unconscious bias training,” its “supplier diversity” policy which prioritizes working with businesses that are at least “51% owned by LGBTQ+ persons or certain minority categories,” and various public statements avowing support for DEI.

But that’s not all.

A deep dive into Henry Ford Health’s various initiatives reveals the system operates scholarships targeted toward certain racial groups.

For instance, Henry Ford Health operates a program (spearheaded by the Emergency Medicine Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee) providing students interested in emergency medicine with $1,500 in scholarship funds. A prerequisite for the Underrepresented in Medicine Scholarship Program for Visiting Students, however, is that students “identify as a member of a group that is underrepresented in medicine.”

Henry Ford Health doesn’t define “underrepresented” explicitly, but notes that it refers to “racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQI-identified or gender nonconforming individuals, individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, and those with special needs.”

Additionally, Henry Ford Health sponsors the Clinical Excellence through Diversity Scholarship, which provides recipients with “priority access to our student rotations and $1,500 for travel, lodging, and other expenses associated with participating in the visiting rotation.”

Again, one of the prerequisites for this program is that students “identify as a member of a group that is underrepresented in medicine.”

And in yet another example, the listing for a scholarship for prospective urology residents (which has since be taken down) not only required students to “identify as a member of a group that is underrepresented in medicine” but required them to have “an interest and commitment to fostering activities related to healthcare diversity, health inequities, or serving underserved populations.”

These listings, coupled with the revelations from Consumers’ Research, reveal a deep institutional commitment to DEI explicitly affirmed by the hospital in its statement that DEI is “woven into the fabric of everything we do.”

However, according to Fox News, Henry Ford Health deleted several sections of its website that dealt with DEI after Fox News reached out for comment on their story about the Consumers’ Research report.

Perhaps Henry Ford Health is realizing that divisive and discriminatory ideology is not the best advertisement for an institution ostensibly concerned with providing quality healthcare.