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Do No Harm Files FCC Comment on Gender-Ideology TV Programming

Yesterday, Do No Harm submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) a “Comment on Further Empowering Parents to Protect Their Children and Make Informed Choices About the TV Programs Their Children Watch.”

Consistent with its mission, Do No Harm submitted this comment for three reasons, First, to highlight that the current TV ratings system is inadequate to protect children from gender-ideology programming that permeates television media. Second, to recommend appropriate content labels that accurately identify gender-ideology programming. And third, to note the imbalance in makeup of the TV Oversight Management Board (TVOMB), which includes — without counterbalance on, among other things, gender-ideology issues — biased organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National PTA.

Please read the full comment here or below.

 

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Oregon’s School of Public Health Is Making the Obesity Epidemic Worse

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What happens when parts of the American public-health apparatus are commandeered by ideologues pushing yet another victimization narrative? Thanks to the “Fat Justice Working Group” at the Oregon Health & Science University-Portland State University School of Public Health (SPH), we may soon have an answer.

“The purpose of the Fat Justice Working Group,” its website declares, “is to engage students, faculty and staff … in learning, activities and advocacy to reduce weight stigma and anti-fat bias in ourselves, our School and society at large.”

Beneath that word salad is a meatier agenda: “We imagine a future where public health is openly and firmly committed to ending discrimination and other oppression of people in larger bodies.”

This is sloppy thinking, directly antithetical to the principles of public health.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), for example, defines its mission in part as “enhanc[ing] health, lengthen[ing] life, and reduc[ing] illness and disability.” By presenting obesity as an “oppress[ed]” identity category rather than a treatable medical condition, Oregon’s SPH makes this work more difficult.

We have been here before. Last year, Do No Harm catalogued efforts by the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University to downplay the adverse health consequences of obesity.

For instance, the school hosted a presentation entitled “Introduction to Weight Stigma & Weight Inclusive Care,” the purpose of which was, in part, to “promote a non-judgmental and inclusive environment for patients of all body sizes.”

Unbelievably, the presentation made the assertion that “health and well-being are achievable for all regardless of weight.” One need only read the relevant medical literature to grasp the inaccuracy of this claim.

Medical science demonstrates that obesity correlates strongly with elevated mortality. It is often, in the words of a Ghana Medical Journal article, “a major risk factor for the development of several non-communicable diseases, significant disability and premature death.”

Moreover, as Do No Harm wrote last year, obesity is not an immutable condition. In many instances, obese patients “who lose significant amounts of weight have been shown to live longer, with better quality of life.”

None of this means that men and women suffering from obesity deserve public censure or scorn. Physicians and other public-health officials should treat all patients with respect, even as they bring their expertise to bear on conditions that lead to significant medical complications.

In short, the medical establishment needs to help people struggling with obesity to make lifestyle improvements or, in some cases, to choose appropriate pharmacological or surgical interventions. Obese patients need assistance, not a team of social-justice warriors telling them that everything is okay.

Faculty and staff at Oregon’s SPH must know this. Yet the work of the Left is always and everywhere to expand the ranks of the “oppressed,” thus granting political power to those who would “rescue” them.

In medicine, this has often meant fixating on identity and compassion at the expense of patient care. Yet evidence-based medical science should not be deemphasized by those who wish primarily not to give offense.

In the normal course of things, such a tendency is often merely obnoxious. When it helps convince doctors not to tell necessary truths, however, the consequences can be deadly.

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When Advocacy Masquerades as Neurology

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[Editor’s note: This piece originally appeared as a letter to the editor in response to the American Academy of Neurology’s (AAN) position statement “A Roadmap to Neurologic Health Equity.” That article is available here.]

It is the opinion of this reader that the AAN’s Roadmap to Neurologic Health Equity takes a one-way view of evidence to advance an agenda that extends beyond neurology, resembling an advocacy group more than a medical society rooted in science and patient care.

The paper, for instance, claims that Black men are “least likely to receive treatment” for headaches. It argues this by citing Burch et al., which reports prevalence—not treatment—data.

Further, Charleston and Burke found “no major racial/ethnic differences in abortive or prophylactic treatment” for migraines in the US ambulatory care setting.

Similarly, for Parkinson disease, the roadmap attributes disparities to “structural barriers,” without engaging other potential contributors. Yet one study cited noted that Black participants may underreport this ailment because they misconstrue parkinsonian symptoms for normal aging. Another offered that lower utilization of deep brain stimulation may, in part, reflect “a clinically appropriate difference.”

Read the full piece in Neurology.

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Does the University of Illinois College of Medicine Support ‘Equitable’ Grading?

The University of Illinois College of Medicine’s “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” page is every bit as politicized, unscientific, and unserious as one might fear. Yet a deeper dive into the page’s resources reveals a grading scheme that, if actually operative, should terrify those eager to see future physicians held to appropriate academic standards.

UICOM has campuses in Chicago, Peoria, and Rockford. According to the Peoria campus’s website, the three branches combined educate one in six Illinois doctors.

Thus, it is no mere curiosity that the institution’s DEI office directs site visitors to such medically irrelevant frippery as a “land acknowledgement.” Nor is it harmless that the DEI website points medical students toward various “DEI Initiatives/Opportunities,” among them the university’s startlingly progressive Gender and Sexuality Center.

Rather, these errors in judgment matter. By introducing ideology into medical education, they blur what ought to be a tight focus on foundational science, clinical skills, and hands-on training.

They may also be paving the way for even more damaging experiments.

Tucked away at the bottom of UICOM’s DEI page is a list of “Resources,” among them “Teaching for Equity and Social Justice.”

Following that link and selecting “Assessment & Grading Practices” then “Equitable Assessments & Grading Practices” brings up a radical scheme whose enactment would seriously compromise authentic academic evaluation.

Specifically, the page in question urges instructors to embrace grading practices that “respect the diversity of students’ social identities as well as the diversity of student interests.”

Such grading practices, the page continues, focus on “reducing assessment biases” — e.g., those that “unfairly penaliz[e] students based on their race, gender, socio-economic status, etc.”

Moreover, the page declares, grading performed in this manner “recognize[s] that students have varying lived experiences and background knowledge.” This language should be familiar to anyone who has previously encountered critical educational theory, a Marxist framework obsessed with power dynamics and systemic oppression.

Among the page’s specific grading recommendations are that instructors should consider “[r]e-assessing [student work] without penalty & [allowing] multiple attempts.” They should consider “[r]ethinking the grading of participation” and “[i]ncorporating personal learning goals.”

Missing from these recommendations is any acknowledgement that medical students must regularly master difficult material that has its source in scientific reality. Students’ “lived experiences” are, in these instances, less important than what (or whether) they have actually learned.

To be clear, the webpage in question was produced by the University of Illinois Chicago’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence, not UICOM itself. Nevertheless, the College of Medicine promotes this material as a resource and thus presumably affirms the ideology behind it.

UICOM should publicly clarify whether it supports the use of “equitable assessments” in medical-school classrooms. If it does, the institution has a serious problem on its hands.

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GW’s Med School Hasn’t Abandoned ‘Antiracist’ Education

Despite the widespread backlash against “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) measures in healthcare, true believers continue to introduce ideology into medical practice. No other takeaway is possible when one examines a course currently available in the “Anti-Racism Coalition” educational series at the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences (GW SMHS).

That course, “Moving Beyond Bystanding … to Disrupting Racism,” exists, according to its website, to “change racist culture, policies, and practices” in hospitals and other medical institutions.

“No matter what role you have,” the website promises, “this training will allow for you to recognize your responsibility in contributing to an antiracist institutional culture.”

The course’s intellectual framework is the so-called D.I.S.R.U.P.T. model, created by GW SMHS medical educator Maranda C. Ward, pediatrician Olanrewaju Falusi, and student collaborators. In a recent post on the medical-news site MedPage Today, Ward et al. describe D.I.S.R.U.P.T. as “a mnemonic that offers a set of personal and shared considerations for building anti-racist clinical care.”

Among the authors’ specific recommendations is that physicians’ rounds should end with a “bias check”: “Did we consider whether bias influenced this care plan?”

The authors also propose that “[p]atterns in patient satisfaction, readmission rates, or delays in follow-up can be analyzed by demographic group.”

According to Ward et al., the issue of racism in medicine is not merely a matter of a few bad actors. Rather, the authors see it as a systemic and structural issue requiring collective accountability. They note approvingly that training participants “grasped bias as a collective issue” and that “teams can create structured prompts to prevent bias and institutionalized racism.”

This is bad medicine. It focuses on ideology over substance, blaming every racial disparity on bigotry while ignoring genetics, comorbidities, behavior, lifestyle, and other well-documented factors.

Moreover, Ward et al. rely on widely debunked “implicit bias” ideology in the plugging (and, presumably, the designing) of their course, writing that “[r]esearch on implicit bias makes it clear that unconscious stereotypes shape physician behavior.”

The problem with this assertion is that there is no evidence that “implicit biases” explain racial disparities in health outcomes. Moreover, the tests used to evaluate these unconscious but ostensibly ubiquitous prejudices fail to meet widely accepted standards of reliability and validity.

As Do No Harm has previously noted, “a 2013 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that Implicit Association Tests (IATs) were ‘poor predictors’ of real-world bias and discrimination.”

Yet these are the very tests on which Ward et al. base their “antiracist” ideology.

Other elements of Ward’s D.I.S.R.U.P.T. defense are just as problematic.

Over and over, the GW professor and her co-designers draw a parallel between antiracist practices and such evidence-based medical developments as hand hygiene.

But such a comparison strains credulity. Hand hygiene is based on testable theories of germ transmission and infection control. Antiracist medicine, by contrast, is based on anecdotes, political theory, and critical social justice.

So, apparently, is GW SMHS’s course. According to the aforementioned MedPage Today article, a two-part D.I.S.R.U.P.T. training “showed improvement in participants’ sense of motivation to respond to racism, responsibility to act, and belief in their ability to contribute to equity work.” These results were assessed via “pre/post-data.”

Yet “pre/post” testing is itself methodologically suspect, as a classic meta-analysis by Victor L. Willson and Richard R. Putnam demonstrates. Across 32 studies, Willson and Putnam found a modest but real average effect: taking a pre-test at all tended to elevate post-test scores, including attitude measures.

In other words, not only is D.I.S.R.U.P.T. based on bad science, but its efficacy on its own terms deserves to be called into question. That its creators haven’t thought to do so is further evidence that their motives are political rather than medical.

At present, physicians taking “Moving Beyond Bystanding … to Disrupting Racism” may receive Continuing Medical Education credits for doing so.

Doctors on the hunt for authentic CME should look elsewhere.

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Newsweek Is Wrong About ‘Racially Concordant Care’

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In 2020, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) made waves in reporting that black newborns were more likely to survive when under the care of black physicians. In a report published by Do No Harm, we speculated that the correlation was spurious. Analysis from economists George Borjas and Robert VerBruggen confirmed our suspicions, and author correspondence retrieved through public-records request suggests that the study conclusion may not have been an oversight but an effort to preserve preferred narratives.

In penning a defense of DEI in medicine, the editors at Newsweek acknowledge that the PNAS study has been debunked. But they cite three other studies that claim to find benefits of racial diversity in medicine, arguing that, based on those studies, there appears to be promise for the hypothesis that racially concordant care is beneficial for minority patients.

That conclusion is incorrect.

First, those three studies must be properly situated within the broader literature. There have been — to our knowledge — six systematic reviews of race concordance in medicine. Systematic reviews consider what the weight and quality of evidence indicate about a research question. When it comes to race concordance, five of six reviews conclude that evidence does not support the concordance hypothesis, while the sixth features easily identifiable methodological errors.

Further, the three studies cited in defense of DEI warrant deep skepticism. As The Economist observed in reporting on the debunking of the PNAS study, “science that fits the zeitgeist sometimes does not fit the data.” We have previously reviewed each of these studies. The problems with all three are fairly obvious once you consider all of the facts.

The first study mentioned involves an experiment in Oakland where black patients were randomly assigned to one of six black or eight non-black physicians before agreeing to undergo preventative health screening tests.

In the first stage of the experiment, patients are shown a photo of a doctor on a tablet and asked about whether they would like to participate in four preventative health screenings. Before meeting with the doctor, patients state which of the screenings they would like to receive. At this stage of the experiment — which provides the strongest, least corruptible test of the hypothesis — willingness to participate in the preventative screenings does not vary according to the race of the doctor on the tablet.

Differences in the Oakland experiment are only observed in the second stage of the experiment, when the doctors depicted on the tablets visit the patients and attempt to persuade them to receive the screenings. At that stage, more patients assigned to visit with a black doctor and who had initially declined the screenings relented and accepted three of the four screenings compared to patients assigned to non-black doctors. The problem is that the second stage of experiment isn’t a test of race: It’s a test of the power of persuasion among six physicians who happen to be black compared to eight who are not. Whereas race would have been salient in the first stage (when patients only saw a photo), it’s impossible to decode whether it was a factor at all in the second stage. Moreover, the study acknowledges that “[t]he doctors, subjects, and field staff were not informed that doctor race was being randomized, though they could have inferred it” (p. 4082). As we wrote in our critique, “If the doctors were aware that the study was examining the effects of racial concordance, which seems likely, it is possible that sympathy with the racial concordance hypothesis would exceptionally motivate the 6 black doctors while undermining the motivation of the 8 non-black doctors to get patients to agree to interventions.”

The second study mentioned by Newsweek involves observing patients across the Military Health System and observing that, for black patients, transferring to a facility with a higher share of black physicians is associated with filling and renewing prescriptions with greater fidelity, as well as lower mortality.

Notably, the concordance effect (i.e., black patients being treated by black physicians) is never assessed directly. Data buried in an appendix clarifies the likely reason. That is, the effect the authors observe is driven by better outcomes among black patients who are served by non-black physicians in facilities with a higher proportion of black doctors. Suffice it to say, the idea that black doctors are no more effective than others at treating black patients but that their presence makes others more effective at treating black patients strains credibility. Precisely why they observe the pattern that they do is unclear, but making logical sense of the data indicates that a higher share of black doctors is the result of something that causes better relative outcomes for black patients rather than being the cause of those better outcomes.

The final study is the easiest to debunk. The authors analyze surveys taken by patients about their experience at a recent outpatient visit. The authors observe and dwell upon the fact that black patients are more likely to give the highest possible score to black doctors on a question about “the likelihood of your recommending this care provider to others” compared to non-black doctors. Notably, however, the average score given by black patients to black doctors doesn’t differ from the average score given to non-black doctors. In other words, the outcome is sensitive to considering only highest possible score versus all other possible scores and falls apart when considering the full range of outcomes. Other seemingly notable findings that are glossed over in the paper are that this same phenomenon is only observed among black patient-provider dyads and that there is no difference for white, Hispanic, or Asian patients when it comes to whether they would offer the most enthusiastic recommendation of a racially concordant provider compared to other providers. Further, the survey features 10 questions, including ones seemingly more important than the recommendation question. For example, it asks about “information the care provider gave you about medications (if any)” and “instructions the provider gave you for follow up care (if any).” The recommendation question was the only one of the 10 in which black patients were more likely to give the highest possible score to black doctors compared to other doctors. Altogether, then, the study fixates on a conclusion that is sensitive to how survey outcomes are operationalized, glosses over the fact that the phenomenon is observed in only one group, and minimizes the fact that concordance benefit is observed in only one of 10 survey questions.

Overall, the evidence is clear: Merit ought to stand alone in determining access to medical school. But you don’t need to take our word for it — just ask black patients themselves. In multiple national surveys, the vast majority of black patients say they have no preference for the race of their doctor. Of course they don’t. Like anyone else, black patients are focused not on race but on getting excellent medical care. And, like anyone else at the bedside, they prioritize technical competence, thoroughness, clear communication, and overall quality far higher than demographics.

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Universities Are Looking for Loopholes to Avoid Disclosing Woke Syllabi

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Two universities are attempting to dodge public-records requests by asserting that course syllabi are “copyrighted and protected intellectual property” or “trade secrets.” Such responses proceed from a misapplication of state law and risk undermining the principles of transparency and public oversight of public institutions.

Last month, the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) filed public-records requests for copies of syllabi and other course materials at the Universities of Minnesota (U of M) and Idaho (U of I).

Among the courses in question at U of M were “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Health” and “Sexual and Gender Health in Clinical Practice.”

Similarly, AAF’s requests to U of I sought coursework materials for “Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies” and “Ecology of Health & Medicine-Foundations 1-4.”

AAF has valid investigative reasons to pursue these materials. Recent reporting has suggested that courses in the U of M system are “steeped in radical left-wing ideology, including content promoting Marxism, ‘decolonizing Palestine,’ Queer theory, and the Black Lives Matter movement.”

Reporting about U of I, meanwhile, has alleged that courses at that institution may have received improper exemptions to a state law banning curricula that “require[] or otherwise compel[] a student to enroll in a DEI-related course.”

Both states have a legal obligation to fulfill public-records requests under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act and the Idaho Public Records Act. Unfortunately, the schools in question have thus far refused to comply with AAF’s requests.

On April 9, U of M replied that the university is “unable to produce copies for release” because the syllabi “are copyrighted and protected intellectual property.” The institution offered instead to “provide [AAF] with an opportunity to inspect the data in-person.”

For its part, U of I responded on April 3 that the syllabi in question are “trade secrets” and are thus exempt from disclosure.

Both universities are wrong. As AAF’s demand letter to U of M makes clear, the Minnesota Court of Appeals “breezily rejected” an identical argument by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system in Nat’l Council on Teacher Quality v. Minnesota State Colleges & Universities (2013), finding that government agencies “may not assert copyright ownership to deny members of the public their right to inspect and copy government data” when a third party’s reason for requesting documents “will constitute fair use.”

AAF’s demand letter to U of I, meanwhile, points out that, under Idaho Code §74-107(1), “trade secrets” are limited to information that is the subject of reasonable efforts to “maintain its secrecy.” Course syllabi widely distributed to thousands of students do not meet that definition.

AAF has given both institutions until June 12 to comply with the law and produce copies of the course materials in question before pursuing “its rights to seek all appropriate relief [in] court.” If either school continues to evade basic transparency laws in favor of baseless arguments, they may find themselves on the losing side of a lawsuit.

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Do No Harm Publishes Open Letter Urging Social Work Accreditor to Ditch DEI Standards

Today, Do No Harm published an open letter to the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), an accrediting body for social work education programs, requesting the organization remove DEI mandates from its accreditation standards.

The letter identifies numerous examples of DEI-related concepts that CSWE forces programs to inject into their curricula. Do No Harm urges CSWE to commit to removing all references to anti-racism, DEI, and other related concepts from its accreditation standards, and requests a response by June 13, 2026.

Read the full letter below.

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Major Health Systems Do Digital Damage Control Following Do No Harm Civil Rights Complaints

Two major healthcare systems have altered their websites to remove indications of racial discrimination following complaints by Do No Harm filed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (HHS-OCR).

Until recently, Appalachia’s Valley Health System (VHS) advertised a “Minority Healthcare Scholarship” of up to $5,000 to “patients pursuing careers in medicine, health sciences, or health administration who identify as a member of a minority racial or ethnic group.” Among the qualifying racial categories suggested by VHS were “Black/African-American, Latinx, Asian-American, Indian-American, [and] Native/Indigenous American.”

Now, however, the webpage associated with the scholarship is no longer functional. Nor does the site’s search tool produce results related to the award.

These changes appear to have been made on or around April 30. In its May 1 coverage of Do No Harm’s complaint, The Center Square noted that “[t]he page for [the] scholarship is no longer active.” Also seemingly removed was “a Facebook post that promoted it.”

That’s not all: recently, health consortium giant Kaiser Permanente added to its “Center for Black Health and Wellness” webpage a note claiming to welcome “members of any race or ethnicity.”

That disclaimer did not exist before Do No Harm’s filing of a civil rights discrimination complaint with HHS-OCR.

Such DEI-related housekeeping is not uncommon. For example, as Do No Harm reported late last month, the Stanford University School of Medicine recently altered its website to remove evidence of a commitment to DEI.

The University of Arizona College of Medicine at Tucson did something similar last year, quietly removing from its online pages content that overtly pledged support for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

As Do No Harm’s civil rights complaints against Kaiser Permanente and VHS point out, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 broadly prohibits federally funded healthcare systems from engaging in racial discrimination.

Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act is similarly clear: “an individual shall not … be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under, any health program or activity, any part of which is receiving Federal financial assistance.”

If VHS and Kaiser Permanente have concluded that Do No Harm’s complaints have merit, then they should say so and implement real change. Hiding public-facing scholarship materials from view or adding “superficial” disclaimers against a multitude of indications to the contrary are no substitutes for contrition.

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The LCME Is Right to Refocus Medical Education on Medicine

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[Editor’s note: This piece originally appeared as a comment in response to Uché Blackstock’s “Medical Schools Must Continue to Teach Students About Structural Barriers to Care” in STAT. That article is available here.]

Uché Blackstock’s piece hinges on a narrow premise: that unless physicians are formally trained in matters of “equity,” they will overlook the real-world constraints their patients face. She therefore laments the Liaison Committee on Medical Education’s decision to drop its requirement that medical schools teach about equity—i.e., the non-medical social and political realities that may affect patients’ lives.

Yet Blackstock fails to account for two basic truths. First, clinicians have long done the listening she wants, without being subjected to inherently politicized equity-based training. Inquisitiveness about a patient’s unique circumstances has always been key to medicine. For generations, physicians have been taught to take a social history. Good doctors listen, adapt plans pragmatically, and focus on what they are uniquely trained to do: assess, diagnosis, and treat the patient before them. Empathy emerges from clinical competence, not ideological instruction that supplants scientific rigor.

Read the full piece at STAT.

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A Pedagogy in Search of Substance

Editor’s note: This commentary was originally submitted in response to “Antiracism Pedagogy in Medical Education, published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The journal rejected the submission.

The New England Journal of Medicine’s Perspective “Antiracism Pedagogy in Medical Education” (published April 4, 2026) illustrates how parts of academic medicine have wandered away from anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology toward an antiracism framework that remains nebulous at best and divisive at worst. Even proponents such as Chioma Onuoha and colleagues concede that antiracism teachings are not “standardized within health professions education,” with current practices frequently leading to “poor learner engagement.”[1]

The evidence base is no stronger: outcomes from antiracist interventions remain “unclear,” while implicit bias training has yet to show improvements in clinical care, all while suffering from substantial methodological limitations.[2], [3] That fewer than 8% of NYCAMES registrants completed commitment statements in 2024—a decline of roughly 50% from the year prior—should not be surprising. The disengagement reflects teaching that is ill-defined, weakly evidenced, and lacking in demonstrable outcomes.

Yet, its promotion continues forcefully through academic channels. Wouldn’t medicine—and patients themselves—be better served by refocusing on clinical excellence and evidence-based training rather than an activist pedagogy seemingly devoid of substance?

[1] Onuoha C, Tsai J, Khazanchi R. Using Critical Pedagogy to Advance Antiracism in Health Professions Education. AMA J Ethics. 2024;26(1):E36-47. doi: 10.1001/amajethics.2024.36.

[2] Blanchet Garneau A, Lavoie P, Bélisle M, et al. Outcomes of antiracist pedagogy in health professions education: a scoping review. Adv in Health Sci Educ 2026;31:341–360. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-025-10448-1.

[3] Vela MB, Erondu AI, Smith NA, Peek ME, Woodruff JN, Chin MH. Eliminating Explicit and Implicit Biases in Health Care: Evidence and Research Needs. Annu Rev Public Health. 2022;43:477-501. doi: 10.1146/annurev-publhealth-052620-103528.

 

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Is ‘Mission-Aligned Selection’ the New Workaround for Race-Based Admissions?

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The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) is changing the language it uses to refer to its preferred admissions strategies, potentially offering a fig leaf to medical education programs intent on engaging in ideologically motivated or racial admissions policies.

Previously, the AAMC had touted the admissions practice of “holistic review,” which prioritizes softer attributes such as personal background and deemphasizes objective measurements of merit and academic aptitude.

But, as Do No Harm has shown, many medical schools that promote holistic review are also admitting minority students at much higher rates than a merit-only review process would typically produce. Specifically, some of these students are less academically qualified than their peers. This raises questions about whether these schools are using holistic review to engage in racial discrimination. It is especially troubling as the AAMC was long a proponent of racial preferences in admissions, even submitting a brief to the Supreme Court to argue that the practice should continue.

In short, holistic review appears to often be a convenient shield that may enable medical schools to continue engaging in racial discrimination. Now, it seems like the AAMC is rebranding the term.

It is doing so largely through instruction on “Mission-Aligned Selection and Retention” (MASR), a framework designed to help medical education programs use “a program’s mission to define merit and identify [applicants’] competencies, attributes, and experiences aligned with program goals.”

MASR “emphasizes individualized review.” It considers not only an applicant’s test scores and grades but his or her “context” and ability to “contribute to the mission” of the institution.

In other words, MASR allows medical schools to consider applicant criteria that are neither academic nor objective. While an applicant’s moral character should absolutely be relevant to the application process, it’s easy to see how “mission alignment” can be used as a proxy for ideological alignment with the political goals of a medical school. And one needn’t be a cynic to worry that such a framework could be used to dodge race-neutral admissions standards.

The Supreme Court anticipated this possibility. Indeed, in the majority opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”

But Roberts continued, “universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.”

As Do No Harm has previously explained, “holistic review” risks exactly that error. The practice “emphasize[s] factors unrelated to objective metrics of academic achievement.” It does so, as the AAMC has previously acknowledged, in order to increase racial diversity within medical schools’ student bodies.

Rebranding “holistic review” as “Mission-Aligned Selection and Retention” does nothing to change this reality. Indeed, the AAMC’s latest guidance features at least as many DEI buzzwords as its previous guidance did, employing such racially loaded terms as “equity,” “systems,” and “community” and urging medical schools to admit students with “a broad spectrum of perspectives and experiences.”

To be fair, the new guidance warns that “programs are prohibited by law from considering an applicant’s race … in making selection decisions.” Yet the AAMC’s guidance opens the door for medical schools to do just that under the guise of “mission alignment.”

Already, the ideology behind AAMC’s new guidance is beginning to show up on medical school campuses. During a recent podcast appearance, for example, Dr. Leila Amiri, associate dean for admissions at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine, remarked that, because Vermont is a “social justice-directed kind of place, we look for, collect, and invite to join social-justice warriors in our applicant pool.”

This came just after Amiri noted: “We hear ‘mission alignment’ a lot. […] To me, the entire application needs to make sense.”

If MASR is the new thinking determining medical school admissions, then evaluating applicants fairly and objectively will become increasingly difficult. Instead, medical schools should select candidates on the basis of objective merit, not alignment with progressive priorities.

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New Watchdog Report Exposes How Healthcare Providers Can Misrepresent Gender Interventions as Routine Care 

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SALT LAKE CITY, UT: April 30, 2026 – Today, medical watchdog Do No Harm released a new report exposing how healthcare providers may be able to fraudulently skirt medical coding rules to receive insurance reimbursement for so-called “gender-affirming care.”

The report, “Spotting Potential Fraud: How Healthcare Providers May Skirt Coding Rules to Get Paid for Child Sex Changes,” warns how providers can misrepresent the medical procedures they perform to pass off transgender medicalization as routine care unrelated to pediatric medical transitions. The report explains the challenge in exposing this type of deception, as in-depth longitudinal clinical reviews are needed to distinguish legitimate medical care from child sex change interventions.

Do No Harm highlights activist groups like WPATH, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania, the Campaign for Southern Equality, and QueerDoc for their role in publicly promoting alternative diagnosis codes — unrelated to gender dysphoria — to facilitate billing and insurance reimbursement for so-called “gender-affirming care.”

“Medical diagnosis codes are being subverted by gender ideologues to avoid proper reporting, hide their activism from scrutiny, and enable potentially fraudulent billing practices,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “Groups like WPATH have publicly promoted the use of misleading diagnosis codes, and our report exposes how providers have financial incentives to do so. By hiding transgender procedures behind codes meant for other conditions, providers are — at minimum — skirting guidelines and ethical standards. Our report highlights the need for greater regulatory oversight and medical review to ensure ICD-10 diagnosis codes are not being fraudulently misused.”

The report identifies eight codes that may be used to hide pediatric medical transitions: 1) Hypopituitarism, 2) Other primary ovarian failure, 3) Testicular hypofunction, 4) Precocious puberty, 5) Other specified endocrine disorders, 6) Endocrine disorder, unspecified, 7) Hormone replacement therapy, and 8) Hypertrophy of breast.

Do No Harm has done extensive work and continues to actively work toward establishing distinct medical diagnosis codes for gender transition, desistance, and detransition. This new report urges payors and regulators, particularly in the states that have legislation restricting such interventions on minors, to remain vigilant of the misuse of ICD-10 codes.

Click here to read the full 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 14 countries.

 

Business,Dei,Diversity,Equity,Inclusion,Workplace,Concept.,Copy,Space.,Text

Stanford School of Medicine Rebrands DEI Department After DOJ Probe

Following a federal investigation announcement, an elite medical school is quietly altering its online materials.

On March 25, the Department of Justice commenced an investigation into potentially discriminatory admissions practices at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The government seeks applicant-level information (like MCAT scores and GPAs) as well as internal messages about DEI, according to reporting by The New York Times.

Recent alterations to the Stanford Medicine website, such as office name and title changes, suggest that the institution may be attempting to scrub any evidence of its commitment to DEI.

For example, among Stanford Medicine’s administrative units is the Office of Community Health and Engagement (OCHE). As an archived history of the office’s website makes clear, the OCHE was, until at least March 30, the Office of Diversity in Medical Education, “committed to eliminating the nation’s health inequities through patient care, education, research, and advocacy.”

This change appears to be largely cosmetic, as OCHE’s team remains mostly in place.

Felipe D. Perez, previously assistant dean for diversity in medical student education, is now assistant dean for community health and engagement.

Sara Clemente, until recently diversity program manager, is now graduate medical education program manager.

Marisa Madrigal, previously diversity coordinator, has been rebranded as graduate medical education coordinator.

The question is whether new business cards signal an end to DEI operations at the medical school. The available evidence suggests that they don’t.

Later this spring, Stanford Medicine will host as planned the 9th Annual Diversity and Inclusion Forum, designed to help participants become “effective agent[s] for change in diversity, equity, and inclusion in medical education.”

Stanford Medicine’s library proudly displays on its website its voluminous “Multicultural Health” resources, which include extensive material on “cultural competency,” “indigenous health,” “Hispanic/Latine health,” “medical racism & antiracism,” and other preoccupations of the DEI movement.

Although the institution has taken down a website declaring its leadership-development apparatus to be a fit for those interested in “activism and advocacy,” “local health equity initiatives,” and “social determinants of health,” the initiative itself remains active.

Indeed, it is difficult to find any evidence that Stanford Medicine is backing away from its DEI-obsessed activities.

If the institution wishes to recommit to merit-based instruction for all medical students, it will need to make more than cosmetic changes.

Dei,Diversity,Equality,Inclusion,Belonging,Human,Rights,Healthcare,Concept.,Medicine

The Dangers of False DEI Dogma

Why, exactly, is DEI so harmful to healthcare?

In practice, of course, DEI often manifests as racially discriminatory hiring, admissions, and recruiting policies; it is definitionally anti-merit and degrades the quality of health services; it treats people as members of specific identity groups rather than as individuals and organizes clinical care accordingly; and it views healthcare institutions as vehicles for social and political change, usually at the expense of clinical excellence.

But beyond these more obvious answers is a deeper issue: its premises simply aren’t true.

The premise of “equity” initiatives, for example, is that racism is embedded into the structural fabric of society and is the primary driver of unequal health outcomes between racial groups.

But the extent to which is a far cry from settled fact. As Do No Harm’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kurt Miceli points out, much of the literature on “structural racism” infers causality when there is, at best, only correlation. Tools that purport to measure “racism” instead often track to socioeconomic conditions, confounding attempts to determine causality.

Indeed, much of the research fails to address these confounding factors, proceeding as if the causal effect of racism, whatever that may mean, is obvious.

Is it any wonder, then, that the solutions that stem from this false premise are harmful?

Take a recent course on “health equity” provided to nursing students at Indiana University South Bend that illustrates a more benign example of how healthcare professionals can be inculcated into counterproductive programming.

“Health care inequities are a measurable, systemic, avoidable and unjust difference in health care access, utilization, quality and outcomes between groups, stemming from differences in levels of social advantage and disadvantage,” the course states.

To ameliorate these inequities, the course recommends that healthcare professionals employ skills surrounding “cultural humility,” such as constant monitoring of ones’ own biases.

“Addressing biases is an ongoing process,” the course states. “Recognizing and addressing our biases, while creating an environment where all are comfortable discussing these biases openly, is essential for fostering cultural humility.”

Of course, there is little evidence demonstrating that individual biases actually impact health outcomes. Attempts to measure these “implicit” or unconscious biases fail to predict real-world behavior or even measure “unconscious racism.”

Thus, constant vigilance of one’s own biases is built on an assumption that hasn’t been validated and functions as an ideological directive, not an evidence-based strategy for improving patient care.

Additionally, the course suggests that health equity is downstream of political and structural factors that alter the social and economic conditions of individuals’ lives.

“Understanding the social determinants of health, is an important component of developing cultural humility as is developing trusting partnerships with those we serve,” the course states. “By engaging in these practices, we can create a foundation for health equity and ensure better health outcomes for diverse communities.”

This gestures at another dubious (at best) theory that has become increasingly popular in medicine: the idea of “social determinants of health” (SDOH).

Again, the premise of SDOH is that differences in socioeconomic factors cause disparities in health outcomes between population groups.

Yet, although these factors may well be correlated with disparities in health outcomes, the causal inference is not supported by the weight of the evidence. As researchers have shown, much of the literature on SDOH fails to properly disentangle correlation from causation and infers that social factors “determine” health simply because they correlate with poor health outcomes.

This ignores alternative explanations such as individual decisions which lead to poor health outcomes, and which in turn may lead to the socioeconomic conditions that correlate with those outcomes.

In short, unsubstantiated theories that attempt to explain individuals’ health with vague gestures to societal phenomena do a disservice to medicine by treating healthcare professionals not as healers first and foremost, but as cogs in a large political project.

The focus of healthcare education should be to train future providers to administer the best possible care, above all else.

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Do No Harm Submits Amicus Brief in Support of Detransitioner’s Lawsuit

This week, Do No Harm submitted an amicus brief to the North Carolina Court of Appeals in support of a lawsuit brought by detransitioner Prisha Mosley to hold accountable those healthcare professionals who she alleges subjected her to sex-rejecting interventions as a minor.

Mosley, a biological female, filed suit in North Carolina after receiving cross-sex hormones and having her breasts removed. She alleged her medical providers misrepresented basic facts about pediatric medical transition and deceived her into undergoing these procedures.

The trial court had initially dismissed Mosley’s medical malpractice claim as untimely. But following the dismissal of this claim, the North Carolina legislature enacted a new law that extended the statute of limitations for medical malpractice claims and should have helped paved the way to revive Mosley’s claim. Yet the trial court refused to reinstate her claim and granted summary judgment to the defendants on Mosley’s remaining fraud-related claims.

Do No Harm’s amicus brief urges the appellate court to reverse the trial court, laying out the science and evidence – or lack thereof – on sex-rejecting procedures for minors.

The brief demonstrates that sex-rejecting medical interventions such as cross-sex hormones and surgical procedures lack reliable evidence as methods to “treat” children suffering from gender dysphoria, or psychological distress resulting from the discontinuity perceived between one’s sex and one’s “gender identity.”

The brief cites the Cass Review, the United Kingdom’s comprehensive independent evaluation of gender identity services and the evidence base for youth gender medicine, which found that the research supporting so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors is very weak and of low certainty. Likewise, among other included examples is a recently published Finnish study, which found that sex change interventions failed to improve the mental health of minors suffering from gender dysphoria.

The brief also explains that the only reliable clinical approach for kids suffering from gender dysphoria is psychosocial support, rather than medical interventions.

Do No Harm will continue to support efforts to ensure accountability for, and protect minors from, the harms of so-called “gender-affirming care.”

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Do No Harm Files Civil Rights Complaints Against Two Major Healthcare Systems Over Discriminatory Scholarship Programs

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH; April 21, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against Beacon Health System and Valley Health System for operating discriminatory student healthcare scholarship programs exclusively available to racial minorities. The complaints ask the OCR to thoroughly investigate both programs for apparent violations of multiple federal anti-discrimination laws.

“It is unjust and unacceptable for Beacon Health and Valley Health to use race in determining awards for hands-on learning opportunities,” said Dr. Kurt Miceli, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “A devoted student, with the skills and desire to learn, cannot be denied participation based on factors as arbitrary as skin color or ancestral background. Political activists who push the idea that only certain racial groups are most equipped to deliver quality care to those in need affirm a demeaning and an inaccurate assumption. We will continue to hold these institutions accountable to the law and root out the brazen race-based discrimination infecting medical education today.”

Beacon Health, a nonprofit healthcare provider that benefits from substantial federal funding, prides itself for “[f]ostering, cultivating and preserving a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion.” Its ‘Underrepresented in Medicine Scholarship’ program offers a student training rotation in family medicine for fourth-year medical students and a generous stipend (among other benefits). While applicants must be in good academic standing at an accredited U.S. medical school, the scholarship is only offered to individuals of select races. Reserved for “traditionally underrepresented racial/ethnic minority group[s],” who Beacon Health presumes have “faced significant socioeconomic disadvantage,” whites and other disfavored racial groups are unlawfully excluded from the opportunity.

Similarly, Valley Health, a nonprofit community healthcare organization that receives a host of federal financial aid and grants, “proud[ly]” offers the ‘Minority Healthcare Scholarship’ to its patients for pursuing careers in medicine, health sciences, or health administration. Recipients receive awards of $5,000. Those interested in applying to this “prestigious” opportunity must be a member of “a minority racial or ethnic group,” a requirement that communicates to individuals of other races that they need not apply, regardless of their academic ability, character, skills, experiences, and perspectives.

Both entities’ programs advance the notion that certain racial groups achieve “diversity” over others; and Beacon Health’s program further asserts that all (and only) certain racial minorities face “disadvantage.” These health systems’ blatant racial stereotypes and race-based exclusions are in direct violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Read the complaint against Beacon Health here and the complaint against Valley Health 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 14 countries.

 

Harvard,Medical,School,At,A,Distance

Harvard Medical School Cuts Out DEI References from New Mission Statement

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Last week, Harvard Medical School published an updated version of its mission statement that removed explicit references to DEI.

It’s the latest indication that among medical schools, including elite institutions, DEI is becoming increasingly toxic.

Whereas Harvard Medical School’s previous mission statement included a commitment for the school to “nurture a diverse, inclusive community,” these words are absent from the updated statement, which reads as follows: “To improve health and well-being for all through excellence and leadership in teaching and learning, discovery and scholarship, and service and care.”

According to remarks reported by the Harvard Crimson, Harvard Medical School Dean George Q. Daley said that the school’s DEI commitment had been relocated, and the school had “fully endorsed our commitment to a diverse and inclusive community.”

Indeed, the Harvard Medical School’s “Community Values” page contains the follow language: “We are a diverse and inclusive community that aspires to fulfill and advance our mission through a commitment to our HMS values.”

Though this is not a complete elimination of DEI, it’s a significant shift: the statement referencing DEI in the school’s community values is descriptive, not normative, and includes no commitment.

Moreover, removing the DEI commitment from Harvard Medical School’s mission may signify at least a partial public departure from DEI as an organizing, motivating principle.

As Do No Harm has previously shown, the rise of DEI and identity politics in medical education manifested strongly in schools’ mission statements.

That Harvard is now bucking this trend is an encouraging sign.

Additionally, last year, Harvard Medical School renamed its DEI office and removed its diversity statement, which included commitments to health equity and DEI, as well as pledges to “challenge discrimination,” “address disparities and inequities,” and “actively promote social justice.”

We’re optimistic this latest change is a sign of more reforms to come.