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University of Illinois College of Medicine’s DEI Evolution Is Unconvincing

Another day, another DEI office name change. Yet this one has been so halfheartedly done that we question the point of the exercise.

Until at least May 24 of this year, the University of Illinois College of Medicine (UI COM) operated a “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” office dedicated to “foster[ing] a diverse, equitable, and inclusive UI COM-munity.”

In recent months, however, that unit has been renamed the “Advocacy and Engagement” office.

A few things have indeed been altered as a result of the shift. Whereas the DEI office’s homepage previously noted that UI COM meant to “[d]evelop and implement a diversity, equity and inclusion framework that [would] coordinate efforts at the individual, unit, department, campus and college level,” that particular language has now vanished.

So has UI COM’s pledge to “[e]nrich faculty/staff diversity through recruiting by growing the diverse candidate pool and improving the conversion rate (i.e., hires) of candidates.”

A third commitment has been reworded. Previously, UI COM promised to “[r]ecruit, matriculate, support and graduate a diverse body of students and trainees who embrace UI COM’s vision and values.”

Now, however, the institution will recruit “students and trainees from economically and educationally disadvantaged communities who reflect the communities we serve and uphold UI COM’s vision and values.”

We concede that these revisions modestly soften the institution’s DEI-related language. A tour of the renamed office’s website, however, gives us reason to wonder if cosmetic edits have been the extent of the change.

For instance, the office continues to be run by Gloria Elam, previously associate dean of diversity & inclusion and now associate dean for advocacy and engagement. Dean Elam’s four listed colleagues remain the same, though several of their titles have been altered along similar lines.

Both the old site and the new link to “Strategic Planning” pages that boast of DEI-related accomplishments. In the case of the old, one representative example is “Conducted Implicit Bias Training for UI COM faculty and staff.” The new, meanwhile, lists as a highlight “Developed and Conducted Unconscious Bias Training for UI COM faculty and staff through the BRIDgE Program.”

Though the acronym “DEI” has given way to “AACE,” both the old site and the new link to a “Collaborators” page listing many of the same academic and administrative units. One of these, the Odehmenan Health Equity Center, offers such events as “‘There can never really be justice on stolen land’ – An Indigenous Methodology Approach to Police Violence.”

Finally, both sites include a “Land Acknowledgement” recognizing “the traditional birthright of indigenous peoples who were forcibly removed.” The particular language therein has not changed at all.

Given these similarities in both resources and personnel, we have our suspicions about UI COM’s evolution. Had the institution unwound its public DEI commitments or reassigned (or parted ways with) its DEI staff, we would celebrate the depoliticization of the education it offers.

Because it clearly did neither, we must simply roll our eyes. Call it whatever you like: A DEI office by any name remains an affront to unideological medical education.

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Do No Harm Files EEOC Comment on Rescinding Racial-Reporting Requirements

Last week, Do No Harm submitted an official comment in support of a proposed rule from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

The rule in question would rescind certain racial-reporting requirements to which American employers have been held for 60 years. In doing so, it would eliminate a process that exceeds what Title VII of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 authorizes, that cannot survive strict scrutiny, that costs more than a quarter of a billion dollars a year, and that corrodes the merit principle on which American medicine and American business depends.

We strongly support the new rule rescinding these requirements and urge the EEOC to finalize it.

For six decades, the Commission has warned employers that asking an applicant’s race is evidence of discriminatory intent, while in the same breath requiring employers to record the race of everyone they hire. This tension cannot be resolved and must end.

Please read the full comment here or below.

DNH Comment in Support of Reporting Requirements FINAL
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Continuing Medical Education Shouldn’t Include Activist Rants

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What do you get when political activists shape continuing medical education (CME)? Whatever the answer is, it has very little to do with science.

Take, for example, “When Identity and Genetics Intersect,” a 34-minute podcast and quiz offered by the American Medical Association (AMA) for 0.5 credits of CME.

While the activity’s learning objectives themselves raise our hackles — containing as they do the woke claim that “research in human genetics can cause harm to underrepresented populations” — perusal of the podcast transcript produces much greater alarm.

The troubling comments in question proceed from podcast guest Kellan Baker, at recording time the executive director of the Whitman-Walker Institute (WWI). According to Baker,

  • “structural racism and anti-LGBTQ bias [affect] HIV risk among LGBTQ people of color”;
  • “too often, diversity of gender identity [is] treated as a pathology … [i]nstead of being treated as a foundational element of who people are”;
  • “everyone has a gender identity, regardless of how it is or is not encoded in the genome”;
  • “[t]he question of how you know who you are is too often tracked back to genetics in this very deterministic fashion that says[,] in the case of sex and gender, for example, that if you have two X chromosomes, you’re a female, you’re a woman, you’re a girl”;
  • similarly, an “XY chromosome [is taken to mean] you’re male, you’re a man, you’re a boy, no questions asked. And that is actually not the situation for transgender people”;
  • “looking to the genome … has major ramifications for policy” — for example, “[t]he ability to play on sports teams for transgender people. And genomics and genetics are really being invoked to create a very simplistic, anti-scientific, binary world that totally excludes the realities of transgender people”;
  • the U.S. is trying “to criminalize the provision of best practice medical care to transgender people”;
  • “[s]tates are rushing to ban transgender people from public life and from accessing appropriate medical care.”

These are ideological talking points barely disguised as scientific discourse. Nevertheless, as the following screen capture indicates, the AMA provides not only CME but “[m]edical [k]nowledge” points for physicians enrolled in the American Board of Internal Medicine’s Maintenance of Certification program, to name just one institutional participant.

Perhaps we ought not to be surprised by Baker’s thinly veiled activism. After all, the now-former WWI executive director currently works for the progressive Movement Advancement Project as senior advisor for health policy, helping that organization to “advance equity” by, e.g., releasing a “Talking About Transgender Youth Participation in Sports” educational messaging guide.

The far-left opinion journal Mother Jones recently quoted Baker’s lament that the Department of Health & Human Services’ August report on the financial incentives behind “gender medicine” is “part of a broader pattern from this administration: [u]sing the power of government to attack science and target health care providers instead of helping families get the care they need.”

No, the real surprise lies in the fact that the AMA continues to endorse Baker’s CME even now, despite its obvious politicization and lack of scientific content. That decision should shock anyone who cares about the actual continuing-education needs of physicians and the grounding of medicine in actual facts.

But perhaps we should say we wish we were surprised. Given the now-decades-long intrusion of wokeness into the medical establishment, the sad truth is that we’re not.

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Debunking Bad Research: Slavery Is Not the Cause of Modern Health Disparities

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Rates of slavery in a Southern county in 1860 are the root cause of modern health disparities, claims a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. According to the article, “Our model estimates ~22 additional deaths per 100,000 among Black Americans relative to White Americans for every 10% increase in the 1860 enslaved population. […] Our analyses held even after controlling for a comprehensive suite of historical and contemporary covariates. These findings are consistent with a model wherein slavery’s legacy continues to shape present-day Black–White racial health disparities via enduring structural inequities.”

If it seems hard to believe that slavery in 1860 is killing black people today, that’s because these findings are simply not credible. A careful examination of the authors’ own results reveals that variation in modern health outcomes is caused by current health practices and behaviors and not by the enduring legacy of slavery.

The authors are aware that “counties with more slavery in 1860 may differ in other ways that shape health today, so an association between slavery and mortality need not be causal.” To overcome this concern and convince the reader that historic slavery is the actual cause of recent health disparities, they conduct an instrumental variable (IV) analysis in which cotton suitability of the land predicts the rate of enslaved people in a county in 1860. They then use the predicted rate of slaveholding to account for disparities in all-cause mortality rates during 2010–2020, controlling for other observed factors.

The key to this type of analysis is that the instrument, in this case cotton suitability, should be predictive of the independent variable of interest (rates of slavery) but not empirically or theoretically associated with the dependent variable (disparities in mortality rates). The authors attempt to justify their use of cotton suitability as an instrument to isolate the causal effects of slavery on modern health disparities by arguing that “there is no obvious reason why soil properties that favor cotton cultivation should be associated with mortality disparities if not through slavery. However, this exclusion restriction assumption cannot be directly tested and may only be inferred through failed attempts to falsify it.”

The authors, and apparently the reviewers and editors at PNAS, must have been so attracted to the conclusion of this study that they failed to devote any time to considering why it is not “obvious” that soil properties couldn’t influence modern health other than through the effects of slavery. In fact, it should be fairly obvious that the favorable soil conditions for the production of cotton would continue to shape economic arrangements and migration patterns in these areas for many years, with direct implications for health disparities.

Because the land was suitable for cotton, and because a railroad infrastructure had been built for bringing the crop to ports, there were reasons to continue growing and exporting it after slavery ended. Without enslaved labor to grow the cotton, cotton production turned to sharecropping. About two-thirds of sharecroppers were white, and about one-third were black, but all were very poor and, relatedly, had weak health outcomes. In more recent decades, however, factories began to locate in these areas to take advantage of the low cost of land, the absence of organized labor, and railroad access to ports. That brought into these areas higher-skilled, predominantly white and Hispanic workers, who tended to have better health outcomes than the “native” sharecroppers. In other words, the suitability of the land for cotton led to the construction of railroads, which attracted factories and exacerbated health disparities in a previously low-income and predominantly agricultural area. In this scenario, the railroad, not slavery, was the mechanism by which cotton suitability caused health disparities.

In addition to the differential effects of cotton suitability on attracting healthier white workers in recent years, areas that were good for growing cotton had differential effects on black migration. Critically, the decision whether to stay or pursue economic opportunities elsewhere was not random. Rather, it was informed in part by the reality that high-quality cotton soils produced stronger economic incentives for both landowners and laborers to establish an arrangement that kept former slaves on the plantation. The result is that those who were enslaved in regions with better soil would have been less likely or slower to migrate out of the rural South. Specifically, according to a 1989 economics study, “Tenants and sharecroppers in the plantation regions of the South tended to move far less frequently than those outside the plantation regions…. Southern tenants on plantations had on average been living on their present farm roughly twice as long as tenants not on plantations in the 1930s.”

Postbellum migration patterns and their link to soil quality mean that, on average, those who were enslaved in areas with better soil and their descendants would have been less mobile due to decisions made after emancipation. This means that rural areas that were less suitable for cotton would have lost more of their population to the Great Migration. At the same time, more recent opportunities in Southern cities would have attracted back from the North, as well as from the Caribbean and Africa, wealthier blacks with better health outcomes on average. These migratory patterns, correlated with cotton suitability but not caused by the legacy of slavery, could account for modern health disparities and clearly violate the “exclusion restriction” required for the instrumental variable to render causal estimates.

Additional evidence of the absurdity of this new study is found in “Supplemental Analysis S9,” where the researchers predict the effect of slavery on black–white disparities in mortality in 1968–1978 rather than during the years 2010–2020, as they report in the main text of their study. Oddly, they find that “higher instrumented slavery predicted lower Black-White mortality disparities in 1968–1978 and higher disparities in 2010–2020. This pattern is consistent with the historical record: the civil rights era brought convergence in racial health outcomes in high-slavery counties, while the post-civil-rights period saw a reversal of those gains as structural inequalities reasserted themselves.”

This is both historical and medical nonsense. Mortality rates during the period 1968–1978 would be the cumulative result of health practices and behaviors over several decades. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not cure black Southerners of the health problems they had acquired over time and that might have caused their deaths over the following decade. Nor does the “historical record” show that structural inequalities reasserted themselves to impact mortality outcomes from 2010–2020, resulting in a reversal in mortality rates. In fact, national data on black and white mortality rates clearly show a gradual and persistent closing of that gap over time. (See figure below generated by AI from CDC data.)

In addition, claiming that slavery caused lower mortality disparities between 1968–1978 but also caused higher mortality disparities between 2010–2020 because of a change in the progressivity of the civil-rights environment concedes that gains or reversals in civil rights, not slavery, cause mortality gaps. Slavery couldn’t flip the direction of its causal effect, since it long ago ceased to exist. The authors might try to contend that slavery has an enduring effect, but slavery did not cause progress or reversals in civil rights and therefore cannot be described as the cause by the authors’ own interpretation of their own results.

Of course, our alternative railroad explanation is perfectly consistent with the results they report in “Supplemental Analysis S9.” Areas that were suitable for growing cotton had low disparities in mortality because black and white sharecroppers shared poor outcomes. Those areas historically had slavery, but it was sharecropping that drove low disparities in mortality rates well into the 20th century. By the end of the 20th century, however, the existence of cheap land and railroads attracted factories that also drew higher-skilled white and Hispanic workers who tended to have better health outcomes, exacerbating mortality disparities.

Just because researchers use an instrument variable and declare that they cannot think of another mechanism by which cotton suitability might contribute to health disparities other than through the legacy of slavery, that doesn’t mean that they have demonstrated a causal relationship. A little bit of thought easily yields other paths by which areas suitable for growing cotton might generate economic systems and migration patterns that cause modern health disparities. And finding that slavery actually had a positive effect on disparities in 1968–1978 undermines the authors’ claim that they are observing the enduring legacy of slavery rather than the varying responses to current economic and political conditions.

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A Taxpayer Win on Pediatric ‘Gender-Affirming Care’

Do No Harm is celebrating. Under a rule finalized last week by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the bill for irreversibly damaging sex-denying interventions for children will no longer fall on federal taxpayers.

We have long called for such a measure. Earlier this year, for example, in response to CMS’s request for comment on the proposed rule, Do No Harm submitted a response arguing that the potential regulation was praiseworthy for two central reasons.

First, because so-called gender-affirming care is a “medical scandal,” the proposed rule was a critical step to protect children, interrupting as it did the funding pipeline by which harmful interventions were frequently performed.

Second, because cracks had already begun to appear — in both the U.S. and Europe — in the alleged transgender consensus, it was inaccurate to say that the medical establishment uniformly supported “gender-affirming care” for minors.

CMS has now accepted this reasoning. As the new rule’s “summary” makes clear, “[s]tate Medicaid plan[s] must provide that the Medicaid agency will not make payment under the plan for sex-rejecting procedures for children under 18.” Moreover, the rule “prohibits the use of Federal Medicaid dollars to fund sex-rejecting procedures for individuals under the age of 18” (emphasis added).

And there’s more. State Children’s Health Insurance Program plans (CHIP) must also henceforth “provide that the CHIP agency will not make payment under the plan for sex-rejecting procedures for children under 19.” Here, too, the prohibition is also federal: The new rule “prohibits the use of Federal CHIP dollars to fund sex-rejecting procedures for individuals under the age of 19.”

Do No Harm lauds CMS and Administrator Mehmet Oz, MD. Yet we also look forward to a future in which sex-rejecting procedures will no longer be performed on minors at all.

Until then, the question of payment is an important one. Taxpayers shouldn’t be made to open their wallets for false and detrimental “care.”

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Government Science Websites Shouldn’t Apologize for Scientists

The job of a government science website is to inform the public about what science has discovered, not to pass judgment on historical figures for their alleged failure to live up to contemporary progressive standards of opinion.

Someone should make that distinction clear to the men and women at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI).

The NHGRI is one of 27 separate centers or institutes comprising the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Its particular role is to “collaborat[e] with the scientific and medical communities to catalyze genomic breakthroughs and suppor[t] the robust study and treatment of specific diseases.”

Nowhere in this self-description do we find an obligation to engage in ideological gatekeeping. Yet the NHGRI’s treatment of James Watson, the institute’s first director and the proposer, with Francis Crick, of the now-famous double-helical model of DNA, suggests that the institute feels exactly that responsibility.

A tour of the NHGRI’s website demonstrates the point. According to the institute’s Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) Fact Sheet page, “[t]he importance of DNA became clear in 1953 thanks to the work of James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin.” Watson’s name, however, is appended with an asterisk:

* James Watson was the first NHGRI Director and appears here as part of our history collection. Despite his scientific achievements, Dr. Watson’s career was also punctuated by a number of offensive and scientifically erroneous comments about his beliefs on race, nationalities, homosexuality, gender, and other societal topics. Dr. Watson’s opinions on these topics are unsupported by science and are counter to the mission and values of NHGRI. (italics in original)

This is poor work on the part of the NHGRI and the leaders who oversee it. Never mind that the apology, as written, makes little sense. (It is unlikely that Watson made “erroneous comments about his beliefs,” as we read here.) The very existence of the statement introduces politics into science unnecessarily and suggests that scientific discovery can be respectably made only by men and women who hold, at all times, opinions suitable to a particular, and increasingly radical, political ideology.

That is not true. Moreover, it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how science works. Presumably Isaac Newton subscribed to ideals that today’s progressives would find unpleasant. But we don’t need to litigate them every time we talk about gravity.

The Watson disclaimer appears elsewhere on NHGRI’s site, as well. One finds it on the NHGRI History and Timeline of Events page, on a page listing current and former NHGRI directors, on a page “Reflecting On More Than Two Decades Of The Elsi Experiment,” and on the institute’s Human Genome Project Timeline page.

To be clear, Watson did indeed make statements that fall awkwardly on today’s ears. For example, his 2007 remarks on race, made at the age of 79, are particularly difficult to excuse.

Nevertheless, it is not the NHGRI’s business to litigate the social sins of important scientists. Its job, at least on its website, is to present and celebrate science.

Visitors to many of the NHGRI’s pages are greeted with a banner declaring that NIH websites are changing this fall. Good. The Trump administration should ensure that ideological disclaimers don’t make the move.

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ThrivingCampus Is Directing Students to Politicized Mental-Health Care

An online portal connecting college students with mental-health professionals promises access to “over 25,000 licensed and vetted therapists and prescribers.” Sadly, the vetting in question has not resulted in an ideology-free user experience or eliminated woke providers.

According to its webpage, ThrivingCampus.com partners with universities to help students navigate a “daunting” mental-health landscape. As such, the organization “walk[s] [students] through the process” of seeking care, not only explaining “the ins and outs of therapy” but helping clients “choos[e] a provider” in the first place.

Some of these services are useful, especially for those individuals who have never previously sought assistance with their mental health. For example, a ThrivingCampus “Student Guide” explains to potential care-seekers the broad differences between therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. It tells students what to expect when they first speak to a clinician and even advises them on how to leave a voicemail for a mental-health professional.

The organization’s problems, however, are evident the moment one glances at its search filters. Students in need of therapy may sort healthcare professionals according to such apolitical criteria as “Setting” (in-person or online), “Specialties” (e.g., anxiety), or “Insurances.” But they may also produce a list based on “Genders,” “Community Expertise,” or “Race & Ethnicity,” options in which progressive ideological assumptions are deeply embedded.

For instance, a drop-down menu under the “Genders” filter produces a whopping 13 choices: not only the often-seen “Transgender” and “Non-binary” but such boutique possibilities as “Femme” and “Masc.”

Using the “Community Expertise” menu, prospective patients may find providers who specialize in treating “Activists,” a category of uncertain clinical validity to say the least.

Most troubling is the “Race & Ethnicity” menu, the existence of which is presumably based on the debunked “racial-concordance” theory — the disproven idea that patients do better when their doctors share their racial or ethnic heritage. Never mind that some therapists on ThrivingCampus list nearly a dozen races in their profile. The point appears to be giving therapy-seekers an opportunity to choose their providers according to the color of their skin.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, an organization with these ideological priors offers plenty of woke healthcare professionals from which to choose. To wit, clicking the aforementioned “Activists” box (for a variety of zip codes) produces the following results:

  • Shirin Zarqa-Lederman, aka the “Diaspora Psychologist,” a New Jersey counselor who “support[s] marginalized individuals and communities by creating safe, culturally sensitive spaces where they can process identity conflicts, racial trauma, and the emotional toll of witnessing global injustices in real time”;
  • Erin VanVoorhies, a Portland, Ore., psychologist who “practice[s] from a feminist and anti-oppressive perspective and strive[s] to create a culturally responsive, affirming space where all aspects of your identity and experience are welcomed”;
  • Sasha Mieko Vasilou, a Chicago pre-licensed professional who “support[s] clients navigating family-of-origin concerns [and] racial, historical, and intergenerational trauma”;
  • Mojdeh Mansoori, a San Francisco therapist who “connect[s] with clients who have been historically oppressed” and works with patients to “begin the process of examining systemic issues, advocating for social change and healing ancestral & intergenerational trauma”;
  • Brianna Halasa, a Cleveland “psychotherapist, yoga teacher, perpetual student, [and] community organizer” who “always add[s] a multicultural and anti-oppressive lens” to her therapeutic techniques.

And we could go on and on.

These self-descriptions are buzzwordy virtue signaling. Indeed, we worry that “activists” seeking mental-health treatment will be so “affirmed” by these and similar providers that few of their problems will be solved.

Yet our graver concern is for the politically naïve college student who stumbles upon ThrivingCampus.com and takes its promise of “vetted” care seriously.

That young person had better tread very carefully.

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Why the CDC’s New ICD-10 Codes Matter for Detransitioners

Detransitioners and their advocates have just received good news from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Beginning October 1, updates to the diagnosis codes used by physicians, insurance companies, and researchers will help ensure that those who desist from their gender dysphoria are seen and counted.

ICD-10 codes allow doctors to categorize patients’ diagnoses for the purposes of medical recordkeeping, billing, and health data collection. Yet, as Do No Harm senior fellow Aida Cerundolo, MD, wrote for the Hill earlier today, there have been until now “no diagnosis codes for patients who resolve their discomfort with their biological gender” or who “want to reverse an attempted sex change.”

One consequence of this absence has been a lamentable official blindness to the very existence of detransitioners. As Dr. Cerundolo wryly notes, a medical system that has a code for “sucked into jet engine” has no excuse for ignoring the clinical reality of desistance or turning a blind eye to detransitioners.

This oversight will henceforth be corrected. Among the ICD-10-CM code updates is F64.A, “Gender Identity Disorder, in remission,” otherwise termed “Gender dysphoria, in remission (desistance).” This code will be applicable to those patients who no longer meet the diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria — that is, those for whom a marked incongruence no longer exists between their “experienced/expressed gender” and their “assigned gender.”

Other new codes will do good, as well. The trio “Personal history of social gender transition” (Z87.8901), “Personal history of medical gender transition” (Z87.8902), and “Personal history of surgical gender transition” (Z87.8903) will be added for further specificity under the already existing header “Personal History of Sex Reassignment.” This will allow for more accurate recordkeeping and thus improve real-world data collection on the status of patients’ “gender transitions.” (Within this section, two additional codes will also be available to providers: “Personal history of intersex surgery” (Z87.8904) and “Personal history of unspecified gender transition” (Z87.8909).)

Finally, the new code “Personal history of gender detransition” (Z87.893) will be available to describe those who revert back to living in conformity with their sex after having previously “transitioned.”

These ICD-10-CM updates represent a major win for those who oppose pediatric transgender ideology. But they are a victory, too, for those who merely want to see medicine practiced compassionately and with a basis in science.

Thanks to the new diagnosis codes, physicians will be able to more accurately document an individual’s clinical state to support the appropriate delivery of care. The clinical data they provide will have a similar effect, helping to inform future practice and guidelines.

Public-health officials will benefit, too. The new codes will allow researchers to collect valuable real-world health information that has previously been hidden and understand public-health needs in an evolving (and highly politicized) area of medicine.

Finally, the CDC’s move will give visibility to those facing these clinical conditions. As Dr. Cerundolo notes in her aforementioned article, “Well over 14,000 children have received sex-change treatments in recent years. As they get older, many will realize they have made a mistake and understandably want to go back.”

“[T]hese patients deserve a medical system that recognizes them,” Cerundolo continues, “because recognition is the first step to ensuring they get the right care.”

Exactly so. Do No Harm stands with detransitioners and applauds the CDC for taking this significant step.

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Nemours Children’s Health and Atlantic Health System Scrub Offending Webpages

Scrubbing race-based programs from the web after being called out isn’t quite an admission of guilt, but neither does it look particularly innocent. Someone should tell Nemours Children’s Health and Atlantic Health System that opponents of discrimination in medicine aren’t so easily fooled.  

On July 28, 2026, Do No Harm filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (HHS-OCR) against Nemours Children’s Health for operating a racially discriminatory pediatric training program for medical students.  

The program in question, Nemours’ “Visiting Student Scholar Program,” offers fourth-year medical students clinical and educational opportunities, professional mentorship, and a competitive stipend.  

As our complaint charges, the program limits eligibility to medical students who are “underrepresented in medicine,” including certain racial and ethnic groups, in violation of both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act.  

Since our complaint, a webpage dedicated to the Visiting Student Scholar Program has been taken offline. One could be forgiven for seeing in this clean-up job an attempt to dodge responsibility, blunt any potential HHS-OCR investigation, and throw reformers such as Do No Harm off the scent.

Atlantic Health System has gotten into the deletion game, as well. Also on July 28, Do No Harm filed a complaint with HHS-OCR alleging that Atlantic Health System operates a racially discriminatory pediatric training program for medical students.  

As detailed in our complaint, that offering, a “Minority Visiting Clerkship Program,” provides training in pediatric medicine and various educational benefits to fourth-year medical students. To prioritize “diversity” and “inclusion,” eligibility is restricted to members of certain racial groups purportedly underrepresented in medicine, another direct violation of both Title VI and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act.    

Sure enough, Atlantic Health System’s page in question now also omits any mention of the offending program. At least from the Pediatrics page that previously hosted it, the Minority Visiting Clerkship Program has simply vanished.  

Interestingly, Atlantic Health System’s program still shows up as a search result on its site, despite the fact that clicking on the link in question produces no mention of it.

These half measures are insufficient and make no guarantee that the discrimination has actually ended or will stay that way. Do No Harm isn’t fooled, and HHS-OCR shouldn’t be, either. 

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New Do No Harm Report Exposes Colorado’s Sex-Rejecting Medical Pipeline

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH: August 10, 2026 — Today, Do No Harm released a new report exposing the wide-ranging scope of Colorado’s institutional support for sex-rejecting procedures for minors, including the use of public funds to market sex-rejecting services and resources to minors.

The report, titled “The Colorado ‘Gender-Affirming’ Pipeline,” exposes how Colorado medical, academic, and advocacy networks have created a pipeline for sex-rejecting interventions for children. The findings are based on a review of several thousand pages obtained by Do No Harm through the Colorado Open Records Act.

“Something unsettling is happening in Colorado,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, chief medical officer at Do No Harm. “A publicly funded network of Colorado organizations is pushing resources that promote youth gender ideology on vulnerable children. Our report is a case study examining how the transgender industrial complex has pushed further and further into the lives of children, reaching even as far as school-based health centers in the state. Do No Harm urges Colorado leaders to prioritize evidence-based medicine and protect minors from a harmful ideology. Patients and families deserve medical care rooted in evidence, not ideology.”

Key Findings

  • I Matter — a state-funded therapy program primarily for youth 18 years and under — recorded 469 encounters categorized as “gender-affirming care” (GAC) out of 12,896 total encounters between 2021 and 2024, including encounters involving children as young as five years old.
  • Colorado spent $4.7 million on a marketing contract that included a social-media influencer campaign explicitly targeting minors ages 13–17, with talking points emphasizing that youth ages 12 and older could access services without parental consent.
  • The University of Colorado School of Medicine hired faculty specifically to staff the TRUE Center, a pediatric gender clinic, at Children’s Hospital Colorado and to research cross-sex hormonal therapy in a pediatric setting, with 75 percent of one researcher’s salary funded by a National Institutes of Health career-development award.
  • The University of Colorado School of Medicine is heavily influenced by pro-GAC political advocacy groups, resulting in a medical-school curriculum that singularly promotes and enables youth “transition.”
  • The CU School of Public Health operated a program (Colorado’s Queer Youth Network) that pays “queer” youths ages 12–18 in rural Colorado $40 per session to participate in weekly virtual meetings. Participants are actively recruited from local LGBTQ+ events/groups that promote youth gender ideology and/or provide youth sex-rejecting “transition” resources.

Click here to read the report.

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 26 countries.

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Another DOJ Win in the Fight Against Pediatric ‘Gender’ Radicalism

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The movement to stop hospitals from performing sex-rejecting procedures on children — and to commit funds for the medical care of detransitioners — has just racked up another win. Following investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center has agreed to both terms.

The Hartford institution had long been one of the nation’s top practitioners of so-called gender-affirming care for minors. As its archived webpages make clear, the hospital’s “Gender Program” provided not only hormone therapy and puberty blockers but “sex-change” surgeries for children under the age of 18.

Moreover, Connecticut Children’s served as an evangelist for pediatric transgender services, creating, for example, a “portal” whereby children from states that banned sex-rejecting procedures for minors could access “gender-affirming” information and “care.”

The institution published a list of reading resources, including explicit material, for children, arguing that “there is no age that’s ‘too young’ to start teaching kids to be allies for gender and pronoun diversity.” The reading recommendations included The Pronoun Book for children ages 0–3, The Bare Naked Book for children ages 3–6, and Sex Is a Funny Word for children ages 8–10, all of which present transgender messaging to minors too young to critique it.

Now, thanks to the DOJ’s efforts, Connecticut Children’s will no longer perform “gender-affirming” procedures or surgeries on minors. Additionally, the institution will pay an undisclosed monetary penalty and will provide $500,000 in medical care for detransitioners — men and women who, as the DOJ’s press release puts it, are “living with the harmful consequences of ‘gender affirming care.’”

This is a victory for the children and adolescents who will not now be subjected to irreversible, life-changing interventions based on a damaging ideology.

It is also a victory for Do No Harm, which operated on the ground in Hartford to put a stop to Connecticut Children’s harmful activities — creating, for example, a robust public-awareness campaign of digital and billboard advertising that exposed Connecticut Children’s outsized role in promoting sex-rejecting procedures across the country.

The win comes on the heels of similar triumphs in Texas and Ohio. In May, Texas Children’s Hospital agreed to fund a “detransition clinic” for men and women who regret the harm done to them by transgender interventions. (That settlement was finalized earlier this week.) In June, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation made a similar move, agreeing to “provide detransition care” to patients.

These are major breakthroughs in the fight against pediatric transgender ideology, a phenomenon based not in science but in politics. If hospitals and “gender clinics” can be made to understand that a bill may eventually come due, they will be less likely to prescribe life-altering hormones to children or remove the healthy body parts of adolescents.

Do No Harm awaits the day when such interventions on minors will once again be what they were for most of human history: unthinkable.

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Play DEI Games, Win DEI Prizes

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For any number of reasons, medical schools should tear down the DEI industrial complex that has made inroads on so many campuses. Yet one largely unmentioned motive might be simple self-preservation.

As the case of Anita Fernander, the “Decolonizing Doc,” illustrates, DEI hires may not always have their institutions’ best interests at heart.

Fernander was the subject, in 2024, of a blockbuster Daily Caller exclusive detailing her work “implement[ing] left-wing policies on race and healthcare across three different medical schools.”

At the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, for example, Fernander founded Black Boys and Men in Medicine, a “mentorship pipeline program” that eventually became the subject of a Do No Harm civil-rights complaint due to its alleged “illegal race-based and sex-based discrimination in violation of Title VI and Title IX.” (The institution has since taken down the program’s website.)

At Florida Atlantic University’s (FAU) Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, Fernander’s work purported to help “students, researchers and health care professionals understand that race plays and [sic] important role in health care” and to “inform[] the public regarding the political and social determinants of health.”

At the University of New Mexico (UNM) School of Medicine, Fernander was paid $243,915 a year, according to a document obtained by Do No Harm, for tasks that included leading

DEI strategic, innovative initiatives to address ongoing and emerging issues (e.g. Native American/Indigenous, Anti-Racism/-Ethnoracism, LGBTQ+, Women’s, Latina/o/x, Hispanic or of Spanish Origin+ (LHS+), Disability, Asian/Pacific Islander, Black/African-American, DACA) throughout the SOM’s operations.

These divisive and unscientific activities should not be taking place at, or paid for by, taxpayer-funded American medical schools.

Nor, for that matter, should the faculty and staff “training” that Fernander presented at FAU’s Schmidt College of Medicine, an ideological tutorial previously covered by Do No Harm. (Sample line: “The application of [Critical Race Theory] to academic medicine provides a contextual medium for understanding racial disparities.”)

Yet Fernander’s activities since the publication of the Daily Caller story provide their own illustration of the DEI road’s serious dangers.

In addition to condemning her previous employers on social media, Fernander has since filed suit against both a then-director of language equity initiatives in the UNM School of Medicine’s Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and the UNM Board of Regents, alleging, respectively, “intentional infliction of emotional distress” and “violations of the New Mexico Human Rights Act.”

While the rights and wrongs of these cases are not yet known, Fernander’s social-media allegations are damaging merely on the basis of having been made.

A LinkedIn video filmed on the one-year anniversary of Fernander’s departure from UNM, for instance, accuses her former employers of “causing [her] more harm than benefit” (1:29) and creating an “expectation that [she] would educate people about racism while simultaneously enduring it” (1:36).

Fernander goes on: “I was sacrificing my mental and physical health in service to white supremacist systems in academic medicine that were not committed to my purpose, nor me, as an academician” (3:08).

These are painful ironies. Medical schools that have explicitly embraced DEI now stand accused of forcing an employee of color to “endur[e]” racism. The same institutions that enriched Fernander for years are now exemplars of “white supremacist systems in academic medicine.”

Unpleasant as it is, however, this turnabout reveals what can happen when medical schools embrace a poisonous racialist ideology at the expense of simply training future physicians.

To put it another way, is your medical school employing a “Decolonizing Doc”? And what might he or she one day say about you?

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When Foxes Guard the Admissions Henhouse, Part Two

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Earlier this year, we lamented the dual role of Lindia Willies-Jacobo, MD, who serves as both senior associate dean for admissions and senior associate dean for inclusive excellence (i.e., DEI chief) at Kaiser Permanente’s Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine.

This unseemly combination is more prevalent than we then reported.

According to a widely available list maintained by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), 11 medical schools in the 50 states and D.C. designated a senior admissions officer as their named “diversity contact” official as recently as 2025.

If, as such a designation implies, the institutions in question have merged their DEI and admissions functions in whole or in part, then reformers can rightly ask whether these schools are violating the letter or spirit of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.

That 2023 Supreme Court decision demanded that institutions of higher learning abandon the “race-conscious” admissions protocols that had long favored minority candidates. Yet DEI ideology demands exactly the opposite: sorting men and women by such immutable characteristics as race, gender, or national origin, then elevating those markers above academic or intellectual merit.

Medical schools ought not to tolerate DEI at all and should instead dismiss it as an unscientific, divisive distraction from the work of training future physicians.

At a minimum, DEI most certainly shouldn’t be present in medical-school admissions processes. Allowing its precepts into that part of a school’s operations risks violating the law and compromising the efficacy of tomorrow’s doctors.

Further investigation of AAMC’s list reveals too many instances in which admissions work and DEI thinking overlap.

  • Feiran Hu, director of admissions at California Northstate University College of Medicine, boasts on LinkedIn that her work includes “[c]ollaborat[ing] with the Admissions Committee members to craft effective admission strategies that foster equity, diversity and inclusivity.”
  • Michael Ellison, MD, associate dean for admissions at Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University, remarked in a 2023 interview that his institution is using “a more holistic approach” to admissions, in which “the MCAT is not the be-all to whether or not a student is going to be admitted to the program.” Instead, Dr. Ellison continued, decisionmakers look “at a student’s … attributes and how they’re going to be able to contribute to the diversity of the class.”
  • Daniel Goodpaster, director of admissions at Western Michigan University’s Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, oversees an admissions process whose “criteria are holistic and broad-based, aligned with our mission and values, and promote multiple dimensions of diversity as essential to achieving excellence.”
  • Crystal Esparza Dean, until this year director of admissions at the University of Minnesota Medical School, describes on LinkedIn her “intentional focus on … increasing diversity, justice, equity, inclusion, [and] wellbeing.”
  • Willies-Jacobo, about whom we previously wrote, recently remarked at a NAAMA NextGen Med School Admissions Series event that her institution wants applicants who have “at least begun to think about the concept of advancing equity in health.”

It is difficult to believe, given these self-characterizations, that DEI officials who serve an admissions function (or vice versa) are placing that controversial ideology to one side when ranking student applicants.

Far more likely is the possibility that DEI beliefs are informing admissions practice. To bring one’s principles to bear on one’s work is, after all, human nature.

Sadly, it is also bad news for a nation that desperately needs a trustworthy, professional, and apolitical medical establishment. Medical schools should put a stop to the intrusion of DEI thinking in admissions.

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At the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, What’s in a (DEI Office) Name?

A frustrating consequence of the backlash against “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) efforts in medicine has been the tendency of DEI officials to veil their efforts. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai provides yet another example of this phenomenon.

Icahn’s DEI work is mostly housed in the Patricia S. Levinson Center for Multicultural and Community Affairs, a unit that works “to foster cultural well-being and belonging for all students” and whose programming “affirm[s] identity” while putting “a special emphasis on the diverse cultures represented at the Icahn School of Medicine.”

The center’s director, Ann-Gel S. Palermo, was previously senior associate dean for diversity, equity & inclusion at Icahn, as well as associate dean for diversity & inclusion in biomedical education, specifically.

Another of the center’s high-ranking administrators, Gary C. Butts, MD, is currently dean emeritus and senior advisor for equity, engagement and institutional strategy and was previously executive vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer for the Mount Sinai Health System and dean for diversity programs, policy and community affairs for the Icahn School of Medicine itself.

These are DEI officials doing DEI work — never mind the center’s anodyne name.

Director Palermo, for example, has “published and presented extensively about culture and inclusivity in medical and biomedical education,” according to her institutional webpage.

Dr. Butts, meanwhile, is a paid DEI speaker represented by All American Entertainment, which boasts of his “efforts to improve racial, ethnic, and gender diversity across the [Icahn] School of Medicine for 15 years.”

Yet even more revealing than the biographies of the center’s personnel are its campus activities. Among the center’s “cultural well-being” goals is its pledge to “[a]mplify the importance of identity development and belonging.”

One specific offering is a “Visiting Electives Program for Students Underserved in Medicine (VEPSUM) Fellowship,” designed to advance the careers of “qualified fourth-year medical students from different backgrounds.”

In partnership with Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the Manhattan-Staten Island Area Health Education Center, Icahn’s Patricia S. Levinson Center sponsors a “Behavioral Health Undergraduate Social Work Fellowship” for “[e]conomically and/or educationally disadvantaged college student[s].”

Too often, projects such as these represent an affirmative-action workaround, by which zip codes and family income serve as proxies for race and ethnicity. (Further, phrases such as “different backgrounds” will fool no one with even a passing familiarity with DEI protocols and values.)

In almost all cases, initiatives concerned with “identity development and belonging” take students’ attention away from the foundational sciences, clinical skills, and patient-care practices that they need to learn if they are to become effective physicians.

These, ultimately, are the problems with medical-school DEI programs. Divisive rather than unifying, they “divv[y] us up by race,” in the oft-quoted words of Chief Justice John Roberts. Time- and resource-consuming, they detract from the real work of medical education and offer in its place unscientific ideologies.

Add this to the list: Such programs increasingly beget tricksy maneuvering, as officials take steps to disguise their activities.

What’s in a name? Accuracy, honesty, and the enablement of legitimate public oversight of a federally funded educational institution. Those things matter.

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Do No Harm Calls on 10 Prominent Medical Organizations to End Support for Genital Surgery on Minors for the Purpose of So-Called Gender-Affirming Care

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SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH: July 29, 2026 – Today, Medical watchdog Do No Harm sent a letter to 10 major medical societies, urging them to reject genital surgeries on minors for the purpose of “gender-affirming care.”

Signed by Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, board chairman of Do No Harm, and Dr. Kurt Miceli, chief medical officer at Do No Harm, the letter calls on the organizations to recognize the commonsense idea that adolescents are not equipped to make informed decisions about such invasive and high-risk procedures and requests that the organizations remove these procedures as an option in any clinical-care plans or treatment protocols related to “gender-affirming care.” Children should not be subjected to unwarranted, irreversible procedures that remove healthy body parts, such as castration or hysterectomy.

The letter warns: “If your society continues to support the entire program of so-called gender-affirming care, it implicitly maintains that the cosmetic outcomes produced by hormones and mastectomies, for instance, confer some form of medical benefit. Yet this position is not supported by nearly two dozen systematic reviews that have been published in this field. Moreover, genital surgery does nothing to alter a person’s outward public appearance and has been notorious for producing multiple complications, including fistulas and urinary complications.”

Do No Harm has done extensive work to put an end to mutilative surgeries on minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria, as seen in its in-depth Stop The Harm database, which exposes the medical entities that perform these invasive procedures.

“Professional medical societies that endorse so-called gender-affirming care in minors bear tremendous responsibility for the harm done to American children in the name of gender ideology,” said Dr. Kurt Miceli, chief medical officer at Do No Harm. “These societies shape professional standards through their policy directives, clinical guidelines, and public statements. In many cases they are viewed as the experts to whom providers, lawmakers, and the public defer judgment on the safety and efficacy of treatments. We therefore call on professional medical societies to begin to right wrongs and explicitly oppose the performance of transgender genital surgeries on minors. No high-quality evidence demonstrates that these surgeries have beneficial outcomes in children. Medical societies must be clear and state their firm opposition to these unscientific and harmful procedures.”

Do No Harm’s letter calls on the following organizations to renounce all genital surgeries performed on minors for the purpose of “gender-affirming care”:

  • American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
  • American Academy of Family Physicians
  • American Academy of Pediatrics
  • American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
  • American College of Physicians
  • American Medical Association
  • American Psychiatric Association
  • American Urological Association
  • Endocrine Society
  • Pediatric Endocrine Society

Read the full letter here.

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 26 countries.

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Kaiser Permanente Is Pushing Transgenderism on 12-Year-Olds

The nation’s largest not-for-profit healthcare organization is pushing “gender” radicalism on teens. This represents an unacceptable substitution of progressive ideology for medical science.

Among Kaiser Permanente’s patient offerings in its Northern California region are “Well Visits for Teens 12 to 18,” recommended every one to two years and focused on “keeping your teen healthy.”

According to the organization’s website, these visits largely involve standard care. Doctors “[c]heck your teen’s growth and development,” “[d]o a physical exam,” “[p]erform standard screening tests,” and “[m]ake sure vaccinations are up to date.”

All well and good so far — these are necessary, beneficial procedures. The trouble comes with the “brief questionnaire” that teens complete before their visit, a copy of which was recently obtained by Do No Harm.

The questionnaire introduces grossly inappropriate “gender” nudges into the doctor-and-minor-patient relationship.

Scattered among its mostly anodyne queries (e.g., “Do you usually eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables each day?”) are items that present transgenderism as a normal possibility that every teen should confront.

Specifically, the questionnaire lists, on page two, in items 12 and 13, a series of “gender” options that are entirely at one with the ideology of the radical Left.

Imagine the 12-year-old faced with these questions and prospective answers.

Perhaps he or she has read about “gender identity” online and absorbed the generalities of the debate, but here is a physician coming in full authority to settle the matter.

“Genderqueer,” for example, is no longer an abstract category but something that an authoritative, highly trained adult thinks our young patient might reasonably be.

One needn’t spend a lifetime studying human nature to grasp that children are suggestible and that even to ask these questions is to put one’s finger on the scale of a fraught culture-war debate that has far less to do with medicine than with politics.

Moreover, the page of the questionnaire dealing with “gender” issues is explicitly presented as our little secret.

Whereas questions about diet, exercise, grades, and seat-belt usage are marked “Non-Confidential,” the aforementioned “gender” queries have a “Confidential” designation — as do questions about suicidal ideation, sexual activity, and intimate-partner violence.

This aligns with a notice posted back on the “Well Visits” page: “To respect your teen’s independence and privacy, we’ll see your teen alone for part or all of the visit.”

To an extent, this makes sense. If a 17-year-old is sexually active, he or she is taking on health risks and responsibilities that his or her physician conceivably ought to know about.

A real discussion is needed, and, at least in some families, the presence of Mom or Dad in the examination room might inhibit it.

This is a far cry, however, from the sneaky introduction of “gender” ideology to a 12-year-old. Not for nothing have states begun enacting parental-notification laws addressing the social “transitioning” of minors and opening up medical records to legal guardians. Parents have every right to know whether, when, and how their kids are being made to question the “alignment” of their biological sex and “gender identity.”

Finally, maneuvering of this kind on the part of physicians is destructive for broader reasons. It is a good thing if Americans trust their doctors. But how will we if healthcare providers come to be seen as ideological agents who can’t be trusted in a room with our kids?

In short, what Kaiser is doing isn’t just bad news for minor patients and their families. It is a threat to the basic trust that makes clinical care possible.

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Do No Harm Files Complaints Against Two Health Systems for Discriminatory Medical-School Programs

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH: July 28, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (HHS-OCR) against Atlantic Health System and Nemours Children’s Health for operating racially discriminatory pediatric training programs for fourth-year medical students. The complaints call on HHS-OCR to investigate the programs’ preferences for “underrepresented” racial groups and find violations of federal anti-discrimination laws.

“It’s disappointing and concerning that prominent health systems continue to sort and value individuals based on their race when determining who can be awarded valuable learning opportunities,” said Dr. Kurt Miceli, chief medical officer at Do No Harm. “These programs are especially important for fourth-year medical students, offering meaningful clinical training experiences, while also giving students the chance to showcase their skills at potential future residency sites. One’s race has no bearing on whether he or she is able to provide high-quality care. Merit, academic excellence, and a commitment to serving patients must be the determinants when Atlantic Health and Nemours select the most qualified students for these programs, not identity politics.”

Atlantic Health System, a nonprofit hospital that receives substantial federal funding, claims that diversity is “at the core of what makes [it] great.” The system’s “Minority Visiting Clerkship Program” offers training in pediatric medicine and is an “exemplary” opportunity for fourth-year medical students to learn from medical staff. Students selected to participate are awarded inpatient residency rotations, an interview for full-time residency after medical school, mentorship, and valuable networking opportunities with hospital staff. To prioritize diversity and inclusivity, the program bases its selection process on race, restricting applicants to members of so-called underrepresented in medicine groups (URIM). As defined by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), URIM groups include American Indians, Alaska Natives, African Americans, Hispanics, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.

Nemours Children’s Health is a nonprofit healthcare system that serves nearly half a million children across more than 70 locations in six states; trains nearly 2,500 medical students, residents, and fellows annually; and is supported by sizeable federal funding. Nemours aims to ensure “that health equity and inclusion goals are at the top of the organization’s short- and long-term planning priorities.” In an effort to “attack and manage the causes of racial health disparities,” Nemours operates the “Visiting Student Scholar Program,” which offers fourth-year medical students clinical and educational opportunities, professional mentorship, and a competitive stipend. Nemours limits applicants to medical students who are “underrepresented in medicine,” ensuring the eligibility of only a select group of individuals belonging to those “racial, ethnic, religious, socioeconomic, [and] ability” classes that Nemours prefers.

Both Atlantic Health System and Nemours discriminate against white applicants and members of other races they disfavor, blocking these individuals from an equal opportunity to access valuable career-training opportunities on the basis of race. The United States Supreme Court has been clear that efforts to purportedly ensure racial diversity or balance disparities provide no justification for race-based programs under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Such acts of discrimination are in direct violation of both Title VI and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act.

Click here to read the complaint against Atlantic Health System.

Click here to read the complaint against Nemours Children’s Health.

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 26 countries.

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Accreditation Changes Are Coming

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Two months ago, negotiators on the Department of Education’s Accreditation, Innovation and Modernization (AIM) committee reached consensus on a much-needed overhaul of the nation’s higher-ed accreditation system. Reformers have reason to hope that long-awaited changes are on the policy horizon.

A Department of Education press release reveals the breadth of the proposed regulatory alterations. In addition to “ensuring that students can transfer credits that they have previously earned at other colleges,” AIM has agreed to

  • “reduc[e] barriers for emerging accreditors,” a move “that will bring increased competition”;
  • “simplif[y] the recognition process” by which institutions “change between existing accreditors”;
  • “en[d] collusion between program accreditors and related trade associations” in order to combat “credential inflation and unnecessary costs”;
  • “eliminat[e] [accreditation] standards that lead to unlawful discrimination” on the part of universities;
  • “protec[t] the integrity of academic research”; and
  • “prioritize[e] intellectual diversity amongst faculty in order to advance academic freedom, intellectual inquiry, and student learning.”

These are laudable goals, long pursued by opponents of the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) takeover of undergraduate and professional programs, including medical schools. As Education Under Secretary Nicholas Kent remarked about AIM’s work,

The changes agreed to today will make it easier for new accreditors to gain federal recognition, introducing competition and choice into a stagnant system. It will make it easier for institutions to leave dysfunctional relationships with legacy accreditors that engage in ideological coercion or interfere in decisions properly reserved for state governments, boards of trustees or institutional leadership.

Do No Harm concurs. We note, too, that executive-branch pushback against DEI is already contributing to an environment in which accreditors abandon long-held “woke” positions.

For example, earlier this year, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the sole accrediting body for allopathic medical schools, quietly updated its 2027–2028 standards, removing the requirement that medical schools inject DEI-oriented content into their curricula.

That move was welcome, but so would be a regulatory landscape in which the LCME can’t force medical schools to indoctrinate students into a discriminatory ideology — not just one in which it chooses not to.

And while introducing a new programmatic accreditor to compete with the LCME would obviously be a major and complicated undertaking, it is reasonable for the federal government to pry open that door.

In a call with Do No Harm members and staff earlier this week, Under Secretary Kent suggested that, under the proposed rules, existing accreditors might move into the professional-program space, resulting in competition between accrediting bodies.

This, too, is good news. Rescuing medical schools from ideologically driven legacy groups may one day be the only reasonable choice left to reformers.

In the coming months, the Department of Education will receive and review public feedback on AIM’s work. If the department issues a final accreditation rule by Nov. 1, the changes will go into effect on July 1 of next year.

Do No Harm will certainly be weighing in. And we will be watching the process with eager anticipation.