Emergency Medicine’s ‘Most Listened To’ Program Devolves Into DEI Activism

Emergency Medicine Reviews and Perspectives (EM:RAP) is a medical education program that provides instructional emergency medicine content and discussions through podcasts and videos.

The program bills itself as “the most listened to audio program in emergency medicine, with more listeners than the total number of emergency physicians in the United States.” 

During a July 2024 episode of the EM:RAP podcast, several emergency medicine practitioners discussed so-called “anti-DEI” legislation and offered their support of DEI efforts.

The focal point of the discussion was the EDUCATE Act, a bill introduced by Representative Greg Murphy (and recently reintroduced this spring) and endorsed by Do No Harm that would cut off federal funding to medical schools’ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

The bill would defund programs that compel students or faculty to engage in racial discrimination, as well as block funding to medical schools that have DEI departments or functionally equivalent offices. The bill would also require accreditation agencies to remove DEI requirements while allowing instruction about ethnicity-related health issues.

The EM:RAP discussion featured faculty members, including Tiffany Mitchell, MD, Italo Brown, MD, and Alden Landry, MD. Predictably, the faculty members, who work at Mount Sinai, Stanford, and Beth Israel Deaconess hospitals respectively, opposed the bill, according to an episode summary that included various statements in opposition to the legislation and in support of DEI.

These statements included: “DEI efforts are integral to promoting innovation and advancing equitable patient care”; “Silencing discussions on diversity hinders progress in mitigating discrimination and improving healthcare equity”; and “Institutions must stand firm in supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts to ensure a fair and inclusive medical education system.”

During the episode itself, the first guest to address the legislation, Dr. Brown, erroneously argued that it would exclude physicians of certain backgrounds.

“This felt like … people who took the same oaths that I took … had automatically decided that people who come from diverse backgrounds no longer should be considered to be in our brotherhood/fraternity/family of physicians,” Brown said.

The idea that legislation intended to restrict discriminatory practices is itself discriminatory is obviously wrong; the EDUCATE Act does not prevent individuals of certain backgrounds from becoming physicians. In fact, it does the exact opposite.

But Brown continued, arguing that the proper response to the EDUCATE ACT should be even more DEI advocacy on the part of the medical community.

“This is why advocacy, now more than ever, just needs to come from us. That we need to rise with all of our physician voices,” Brown said.

But the endorsements of DEI didn’t end there.

Later in the episode, Dr. Landry discussed the role of DEI offices in medical schools, arguing that DEI must be present in every corner of medical school administrations.

“I do think that every office of student affairs on a medical school campus should champion DEI offices,” he said. “Every DEI office of faculty affairs should champion DEI efforts. I think every office of research should champion DEI efforts … it should be in every office in every institution.”

The discussion concluded with an endorsement of DEI advocacy from Dr. Mitchell, who succinctly summed up the EM:RAP faculty’s position.

“All of our institutions, all of our hospitals, and schools, and courthouses should be proud to proclaim a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Full stop.”

EM:RAP is woefully out of touch with the reality of DEI, and its faculty appear to misunderstand the subjects they are discussing.

DEI, by its nature, divides individuals on the basis of race and encourages racial discrimination to achieve “equitable” ends. 

Not only is DEI dangerous, it is antithetical to the ethical practice of medicine.