American Physical Therapy Association Ditches Discriminatory Scholarship Programs

The American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) appears to have ditched discriminatory eligibility criteria from two of its scholarship programs.

In January, Do No Harm reported on two of the APTA’s discriminatory scholarship programs, financed through the organization’s Minority Scholarship Fund.

These included APTA’s Faculty Development Scholarship Award, which provided a monetary award to “minority faculty pursuing a postprofessional doctoral degree.”

The award’s eligibility criteria stated that applicants had to 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 also operated the PT Student and PTA Student Awards program, which likewise required applicants to be members of the aforementioned racial groups to receive the award.

These programs now appear to have been scrubbed from the APTA’s website. 

While the Minority Scholarship Fund webpage is still up on the APTA website, its information page now links to an awards page titled “Access and Opportunity Scholarship Fund Awards.”

That page contains revised descriptions of both the Faculty Development Scholarship Award and the PT Student and PTA Student Awards, which lists several eligibility criteria, none of which make reference to diversity, minority status, underrepresented groups, or any other factor that would be used to discriminate on the basis of race.

The webpage that previously included the eligibility criteria for the discriminatory awards programs likewise redirects to the “Access and Opportunity Scholarship Fund Awards’ page.

Additionally, the “Honors & Awards Programs” webpage, which previously linked to the discriminatory Faculty Development Scholarship Award and PT Student and PTA Student Awards, no longer mentions either of these programs.

These changes appear to have occurred at some point within the past two months; the webpages for the discriminatory awards programs were live as recently as June.

Do No Harm credits the APTA for eliminating the divisive, discriminatory eligibility criteria from its scholarship programs. 

These opportunities should be open to all, not restricted to individuals on the basis of their race.