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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.

 

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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.

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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.

 

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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.

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Do No Harm Urges IRS To Investigate the American Medical Association Foundation’s Tax-Exempt Status

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SALT LAKE CITY, UT; April 8, 2026 – This week, Do No Harm filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), urging an investigation into whether the American Medical Association (AMA) Foundation should have its tax-exempt status revoked for operating racially discriminatory scholarships.

“Racially discriminatory scholarships are unlawful and morally wrong, to say nothing of the negative impact they have on public confidence in our medical system,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “Based on the evidence in our complaint, we believe the IRS should revoke the AMA Foundation’s tax-exempt status for operating a racially discriminatory program. The AMA’s obsession with identity politics is no secret, and it should be held accountable for allowing race to dictate applicants’ eligibility for valuable and lucrative learning opportunities. If the AMA Foundation wants to retain its federal tax advantage, it must open its scholarships to applicants of all races.”

The AMA Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the American Medical Association, funds and oversees the Physicians of Tomorrow Scholarship program, which provides lucrative scholarships to third-year medical students. Most scholarship awards include prizes of up to $10,000 along with national recognition and access to resources and support. However, as alleged in Do No Harm’s complaint, several of these scholarships explicitly discriminate based on race and violate established public policy and civil rights laws forbidding racial discrimination. Under Supreme Court precedent, having even one unlawful policy under 26 U.S.C § 501(c)(3), including a racially discriminatory policy, makes the entire organization ineligible for tax-exempt status.

Click here to read the IRS complaint.

Background:

The AMA Foundation’s Physicians of Tomorrow Scholarship is an umbrella program encompassing various discrete scholarships. However, several scholarships explicitly hinge eligibility on racial criteria, with two scholarships preferring certain racial minorities over other racial groups and one scholarship preferring certain white racial groups over others.

  • The Dr. Richard Allen Williams & Genita Evangelista Johnson/Association of Black Cardiologists Scholarship awards $5,000 to medical students interested in cardiology, but only if they are “African American/Black.”
  • The Underrepresented in Medicine Scholarship awards $10,000 to winners who are “African American/Black, Latine/Hispanic or Indigenous (American Indian, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native).”
  • The Patricia L. Austin Family Physicians of Tomorrow Scholarship awards $10,000 to winners and explicitly requires applicants to be “of Eastern European descent.”

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.

 

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When Ideology Replaces Accuracy: The ATS’s Spirometry Shift

In recent years, academic medical societies have increasingly issued recommendations and policy statements that seem motivated less by a commitment to scientific rigor and more by an adherence to fashionable ideologies.

The American Thoracic Society is unfortunately no exception to this trend. Its 2023 decision to abandon race‑adjusted reference equations for spirometry—long a straightforward physiological test—does not necessarily make the test more accurate, may not deliver better outcomes, and does not clearly improve certainty in a tool meant to elucidate lung mechanics. By prioritizing broad ideological narratives over data‑driven, objective measures, recent changes risk undermining the core purpose of this diagnostic test and ultimately fail to improve patient care, exchanging one set of uncertainties for another.

Spirometry measures the volume and flows produced after a forced exhalation from total lung capacity. Measurements include the Forced Expiratory Volume in one second (FEV1), Forced Vital Capacity (FVC) (maximal amount exhaled), and the FEV1/FVC ratio. In the right clinical setting spirometry helps distinguish obstructive from restrictive lung physiology. Whether a value is “normal” depends on reference equations from healthy populations. These equations have always adjusted for height, age, and sex. And for two decades, they also included race-based adjustments given datasets consistently showing average FEV1 and FVC values differing across populations. Ironically, this change was an effort to make the equations, which had originally been based on data from Caucasians, more inclusive by including data from multiple ethnic groups while also having some physiologic rationale by accounting for the smaller Cormic index (smaller thorax for a given standing height) seen in observational studies of individuals of African descent as well as others. This approach, while imperfect, was accepted for diagnosing abnormal physiology.

Flash forward to recent times. In 2023, the ATS moved to eliminate race-based adjustment from the reference equations. Thirty-three workshop participants—drawn from both the ATS Pulmonary Function Test Committee and the ATS Health Equity and Diversity Committee—met over the issue. Thereafter an official statement was produced explaining “why race and ethnicity should no longer be considered factors in interpreting the results of spirometry.” If this change had improved diagnostic precision, it would have been welcome.

From the outset, the ATS statement framed the prior race‑adjusted equations as products of “structural racism,” despite their intent to improve accuracy by incorporating data from multiple populations. More than 90% of workshop participants nevertheless endorsed adopting a race-neutral reference equation, citing non-clinical benefits such as affirming that “race and ethnicity are not biological variables.” At the same time, ATS issued a word of caution within its own statement, acknowledging uncertain effects and potential harms with the new approach. Indeed, the full clinical consequences of removing race from the reference equations remain unknown. What is certain is that this change will reclassify some black patients with previously “low‑normal” values as abnormal, and some white patients previously labeled abnormal as normal.

No doubt, clinicians will still interpret pulmonary function tests (PFTs) in context, but this shift introduces new opportunities for misclassification without evidence that diagnostic accuracy or patient outcomes will improve. A patient with exertional dyspnea, for example, may now appear to have obstructive disease when the true cause is something else, like cardiac disease for example. The ATS document itself warns of potential harm because of the race-neutral equation, including, but not limited to unnecessary workups, inappropriate disease labeling, insurance or occupational consequences, and altered surgical risk assessments.

The central issue is simple: the recent race-neutral recommendations do not clearly improve diagnostic accuracy and introduce a different set of uncertainties into a test whose purpose is to clarify physiology. The change appears driven less by data and more by ideology. It risks undermining the primary function of any diagnostic tool, that is, providing clinicians with the best, most accurate information so they can provide exceptional care to their patients.  While an argument could be made for improving the original reference-equation approach—or even abandoning it all together in favor of alternatives like using patients as their own baseline—any change should be driven by data supporting improved clinical accuracy for individual patients regardless of race, and not a particular political agenda.

Dr. Michael Depietro is a pulmonologist and Do No Harm member. 

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New Do No Harm Report Debunks AAMC’s Racial Concordance Narrative

SALT LAKE CITY, UT: March 31, 2026 – Today, medical watchdog Do No Harm released a new report debunking assertions by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) about alleged benefits of racial concordance in assessing and treating pain.

The report, “How the AAMC Fails to Read and Correctly Interpret the Research It Cites,” exposes the AAMC’s role in elevating activism over evidence within its amicus brief submitted in the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case over race-based college admissions. The brief cites four unreliable studies to defend the discredited theory that racial concordance, in which patients are treated by doctors of the same race, improves health outcomes.

Yet, as Do No Harm’s report shows, not one of them actually supports the asserted benefit of racial concordance in the treatment of pain.

“Our report exposes the tactics employed by activist medical organizations to infuse racial discrimination throughout all of healthcare,” said Jay Greene, PhD, Director of Research at Do No Harm. “The country’s most prominent medical societies either didn’t read or purposely misrepresented the studies used to justify the debunked racial concordance myth. They failed in their responsibility to describe medical research accurately to the highest court in the land. This dereliction of their duty to honestly assess studies raises doubts about the scientific credibility of these organizations more broadly.”

Do No Harm has previously rebutted the general claim of racial concordance and, throughout the latest report, thoroughly addresses the AAMC’s failure to describe research results accurately.

Click here to read the full report.

Background: 

  • The first study wrongly suggests that white trainees are more likely than non-white trainees to hold false medical beliefs about black patients. However, the study focuses on medical trainees (not independently practicing doctors), never compares black trainees to non-black trainees, never examines the treatment of black patients, and conveniently leaves out data showing non-white trainees were actually more likely than white trainees to hold those false beliefs.
  • The second study concludes that black children with appendicitis are as likely as white children with appendicitis to be given an analgesic but significantly less likely to receive an opioid. This study also does not support racial concordance in pain treatment because it never examines that question.
  • The third study is only a review of research on racial differences in pain treatment. Notably, it presents no original findings and fails to examine whether a physician’s race was associated with differences in the treatment of pain.
  • The fourth study finds that non-minority patients were more likely to receive guideline-recommended analgesic prescriptions than minority patients. However, it never examines whether pain treatment for black patients was any different if their physician was also black. It also did not collect data on pain treatment for white patients.

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.

 

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Do No Harm Files Lawsuit Challenging Discriminatory Federal Health Scholarship Program 

SALT LAKE CITY, UT; March 30, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the Native Hawaiian Health Scholarship Program (“the Program”) administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“In the last year, the Department of Health and Human Services has made historic strides toward ending racial bias in medicine and restoring meritocracy,” said Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman at Do No Harm. “That this program still exists even after the efforts by this administration to course correct proves just how widespread institutional race discrimination has become. Our complaint challenging the Native Hawaiian Health Scholarship Program is aimed at ensuring well-deserving applicants can qualify to compete for the financial relief the scholarship provides. The criteria in question should be revised so that the program will align with HHS goals to restore excellence and merit in healthcare.”

Read the full complaint here.

Background:

The Program is administered by HHS and provides generous financial aid, including assistance for tuition, living expenses and other costs, for students pursuing certain healthcare careers. In exchange, scholarship recipients agree to provide healthcare services in Hawaii for a couple of years after graduation.

However, to be eligible, applicants must be “Native Hawaiians,” a requirement that is enshrined into federal law. The Program defines Native Hawaiian as a U.S. citizen who is “a descendant of the aboriginal people, who prior to 1778, occupied and exercised sovereignty in the area that now constitutes the state of Hawaii.”

This eligibility barrier is racial discrimination.

Do No Harm represents several of its members in this lawsuit, who, but for their race, would be qualified and competitive applicants. These courageous members are taking a stand because they believe that well-deserving students shouldn’t be denied life-changing opportunities on the basis of race.

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.