New Report Exposes Ideological Capture of Continuing Medical Education

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SALT LAKE CITY, UT; February 4, 2026 – Today, medical watchdog Do No Harm released its newest report entitled “The Ideological Capture of Continuing Medical Education.”

The report exposes the American Medical Association (AMA) for developing Continuing Medical Education (CME) courses that prioritize political activism and fashionable social issues rather than fostering professional growth in doctors to ensure enhanced patient care.

“Given their track record of bias and ideological activism, it’s no surprise the AMA is pushing thinly-veiled political propaganda to medical professionals under the guise of education,” said Naomi Risch, report author and Senior Research Associate at Do No Harm. “Such programs, injected with divisive narratives, undermine the integrity of medical education and disregard the necessity of scientific rigor. Patients want to have confidence that they are receiving the highest quality care from doctors and nurses, free from the influence of a particular political agenda. These biased CME programs not only waste professionals’ time that could otherwise be spent learning about the latest medical breakthroughs, but also diminish patient confidence in the quality of care they’re receiving.”

To audit CME course content, Do No Harm identified the top breakthroughs in medicine in the last century and conducted a keyword search that compared the mentions of politicized buzzwords to the mentions of relevant medical terms.

The results reveal that CME courses prioritize advancing political narratives, rather than offering content aimed at sharpening medical professionals’ ability to provide exceptional medical services to patients. Do No Harm also evaluated the information presented in the AMA’s additional online educational resources to unveil further commitment to radical identity politics.

Results from Do No Harm’s report confirming the AMA’s push of ideological content within CME:

  • In the CME courses evaluated, the words “equity,” “health equity,” and “racism” appear over one thousand times; far more than words associated with medical breakthroughs, including “CRISPR,” “mRNA,” and “gene therapy.”
  • AMA offers DEI-focused CME modules that rely on “academic” papers written by individuals without medical degrees.
  • Additional AMA resources falsely claim that so-called “gender-affirming care” is “medically necessary, evidence-based care that improves the physical and mental health of transgender and gender-diverse people.”

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.

Do No Harm Applauds ASPS for Rejecting Sex-Denying Surgeries for Children

Today, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) released a position statement recommending surgeons do not perform sex-denying surgical procedures on minors.

The ASPS is the first major medical association to reject such harmful interventions.

“High praise to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons for taking an important step toward ending the unscientific and harmful practice of sex-rejecting procedures on minors,” said Do No Harm Chairman Stanley Goldfarb, MD. “The ASPS becomes the first major medical organization to support evidence-based and ethical medicine and reject, in their words, these harmful and irreversible procedures.” 

“The ASPS’s thoughtful, scientific, and well-reasoned statement today is a model for other medical organizations — namely the Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and others — to follow and disavow their previous support for experimental and unscientific interventions,” said Dr. Goldfarb. “This fight is not over, and we will continue to protect American children by exposing any organization that spreads gender lies.”

The ASPS position statement cited the Department of Health and Human Services’s May 2025 comprehensive review of the evidence supporting sex-denying interventions for children, as well as the United Kingdom’s 2024 Cass Review; both reviews found that the evidence supporting these interventions was weak.

The ASPS position statement further stated that there is insufficient evidence supporting “endocrine” interventions in children. 

The ASPS position reads as follows:

“Consistent with ASPS’s August 2024 statement that the overall evidence base for gender-related endocrine and surgical interventions is low certainty, and in light of recent publications reporting very low/low certainty of evidence regarding mental health outcomes, along with emerging concerns about potential long-term harms and the irreversible nature of surgical interventions in a developmentally vulnerable population, ASPS concludes there is insufficient evidence demonstrating a favorable risk-benefit ratio for the pathway of gender-related endocrine and surgical interventions in children and adolescents. ASPS recommends that surgeons delay gender-related breast/chest, genital, and facial surgery until a patient is at least 19 years old.”

Do No Harm applauds the ASPS for following the evidence and urges other medical associations to follow suit.

Simply put, sex-denying medical interventions such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions are not well-supported as treatments for minors suffering from gender dysphoria.

These interventions pose serious risks and may cause major irreversible harm.

Indeed, several European countries already recognize the experimental nature of so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors and have limited children’s access to these interventions.

Although the ASPS did not endorse laws restricting these interventions, its position statement is a crucial step forward for the medical field and a sign that the tide is turning against gender ideology.

The ASPS position statement also drew praise from the Department of Health and Human Services.

“We commend the American Society of Plastic Surgeons for standing up to the overmedicalization lobby and defending sound science,” said Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “By taking this stand, they are helping protect future generations of American children from irreversible harm.”

Do No Harm once again applauds the ASPS for standing up to gender ideology and following the evidence.

We urge other medical associations to do the same.

Medical Resident Union Is Working to Inject DEI Into Healthcare

The Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR), a union representing interns, resident physicians, and fellows and a subdivision of the massive Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is working to inject DEI into clinical practice.

The organization’s “priority issues” include “Immigrant Rights” which, a keen observer may notice, has nothing to do with healthcare or medicine.

But most troubling is the union’s vision of healthcare and healthcare education.

The organization’s “Diversity, Inclusion & Anti-Racism” priority issue states the following: “Our national strategy and local organizing around health justice, racial justice, and social justice ensure our patients, members, and communities have what they need to thrive.”

Indeed, CIR maintains a committed DEI task force with the goal of advancing identity politics in healthcare.

“The members of CIR’s Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-racism (DIAR) Task Force develop a national strategy and advance local organizing around health equity, racial justice, and improving social determinants of health for our patients, members, and communities,” the task force webpage reads.

This alone is cause for alarm: for one, “health equity” in practice often entails policies aimed at equalizing health outcomes between racial groups. This reduces people to group identities rather than treating them as individuals, opening the door for racial discrimination.

And “social determinants of health” refers to the unsupported notion that social and economic factors such as income determine an individual’s health outcomes, such that policy responses aimed at improving health should target these determinants.

The issue with this theory, however, is that while these factors may be correlated with disparities in health outcomes, the evidence that they actually cause poor health outcomes is shoddy and weak, at best. 

Worse, the broad framing of social determinants of health opens the door to precisely this boundless line of reasoning: once every aspect of life can be construed as a health factor, virtually anything can be recast as a medical concern. 

In practice, this invites an ever‑expanding role for government and health institutions to intervene in domains far beyond the proper scope of medical care. And it shifts medicine away from its core mission of diagnosing and treating illness, redirecting its focus toward managing broad social conditions that lie far outside the clinical domain.

Next, per the webpage, the task force’s work includes “Advancing language justice initiatives to support patients’ access to healthcare” and, most concerningly, “Negotiating DIAR curriculum and resources into workers’ contracts.”

It’s unclear exactly how this work will impact healthcare in reality, but needless to say, injecting DEI into the healthcare system by way of worker contracts is at the very least concerning.

Physicians should be focused on providing the best care possible, not working to inject divisive and discriminatory ideology into clinical practice.

Evidence Lacking for Claim That the Stress of Racism Shortens Lives

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If researchers produced a study finding that poor and minority people tend to be more likely to have health problems and die at a younger age, it probably wouldn’t be published in a leading medical journal or covered with articles in national newspapers. It would rightly be seen as a restatement of the well-known, sad reality that for a variety of reasons poor and minority people tend to have worse diet and exercise and are more likely to use drugs and alcohol, contributing to worse health and earlier death.

But if researchers relabel the problems poor and minority people experience as “cumulative lifespan stress” and suggest those problems are the result of “systemic and explicit discrimination,” those same banal observations can earn a spot in one of the American Medical Association’s top journals and be covered in The Washington Post under the headline: “New evidence shows how discrimination shortens lives in Black communities.”

To be clear, the study published in JAMA Network Open does not demonstrate in any way that discrimination shortens lives in black communities. All it does is show that five measures, which they combine and call “cumulative lifespan stress,” are correlated with indicators of inflammation and are also correlated with dying younger. They also observe that black subjects scored higher on the index they called “stress,” had higher measures of inflammation, and also tended to die at an earlier age. The study’s research design does not allow them to identify whether the five measures they combine and label as “stress” caused inflammation or earlier death, nor can their study exclude whether other factors that they did not examine could have caused both the measures of inflammation and dying at a younger age.

Let’s consider the five measures the researchers use as an index for the physiological stress over one’s life to see how weak the study’s research design is. To capture this cumulative lifespan stress, researchers surveyed study participants to collect information on “(1) childhood maltreatment[…], (2) adult lifetime trauma exposure[…], (3) researcher-verified stressful life events[…], (4) discrimination[…], and (5) indices of socioeconomic status.”

The researchers combine these five measures into a single indicator that they call “cumulative lifespan stress,” but it is far from clear that these five measures actually capture physiological stress. In fact, many of these five measures include information on health problems or factors that could contribute to health problems. For example, the survey used to capture “adult lifetime trauma exposure” includes measures of whether subjects had “experienced a life threatening illness,” “experienced a miscarriage,” and was involved in an accident or otherwise received a serious injury. The measure of “stressful life events” includes information on serious illness or injury and whether a close relative had died.

These health challenges may be stressful, but it would be highly misleading to conclude that the stress associated with serious illnesses caused people to die at a younger age as opposed to the illnesses themselves. The researchers never control for the actual illnesses that subjects have when examining the correlation between their “cumulative lifespan stress” measure and the probability of early death. A subject could have chronic diabetes, uncontrolled blood pressure, or cancer and the researchers would conclude that they died of stress rather than these various diseases.

It is also important to note that only one of the five measures that they claim capture stress includes indicators of discrimination. And that measure asks whether subjects believe they had been treated “unfairly” in employment, housing, or other matters for a variety of reasons, only one of which is race. To conclude that this information, which is part of one of five measures that collectively are associated with early death, means that “discrimination shortens lives” would be completely irresponsible.

The reason this shoddy research receives such favorable treatment by a leading medical journal and alarmist coverage from national newspapers is that people wish to advance a political argument blaming racism for higher rates of health problems and early death in the black community. But nothing in this research demonstrates societal discrimination is to blame. By failing to control for the health challenges associated with diet, exercise, and alcohol and drug use, and by falsely relabeling reports of serious illness or risks of getting serious illnesses as “cumulative lifespan stress,” the study is attributing to racism what could easily be explained by medical comorbidities, individual choices, and community dysfunction.

If you are wondering who is paying for this shoddy research, the answer is you are.

Taxpayers funded this research through grants awarded by the National Institute on Aging, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The last source of funding is particularly ironic since the study did not examine the obvious possibility that alcohol abuse could be part of the explanation for the results they observe. It’s bad that the American people must be falsely blamed for causing their black neighbors to die because of stressful discrimination, but even worse that they have to pay for such chicanery. Perhaps paying to be falsely blamed is also dangerously stressful.

Department of Justice Moves to Intervene in Do No Harm Lawsuit Against UCLA Medical School

Today, the Department of Justice moved to intervene in Do No Harm’s lawsuit against the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

In May 2025, Do No Harm and Students for Fair Admissions filed a major class action lawsuit against UCLA for its discriminatory DEI medical admissions policy. 

Our lawsuit alleged that, under the guise of “holistic admissions,” UCLA has been violating the Constitution and ignoring federal law in an effort to continue discriminating against applicants on the basis of race.

This critical case has been moving forward in federal court as we fight for all students who have faced, or may face, racial discrimination in UCLA’s medical school admissions. 

On January 28, 2026, the United States government filed its motion to intervene in the case and stop these harmful discriminatory practices from continuing to persist at UCLA.

“The United States was right in its move to join this case, which is of great public importance,” said Do No Harm Executive Director Kristina Rasmussen. “We look forward to the Justice Department’s additional efforts here to get to the bottom of what appears to be an effort by UCLA to continue a race-based medical school admissions process in contravention of the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions.”

The Department of Justice complaint cites admissions data showing that black and Hispanic matriculants have on average lower MCAT scores and GPAs than white and Asian applicants, and alleges that this indicates racial discrimination in admissions.

A favorable resolution of this lawsuit will help ensure that universities across the country think twice before discriminating on the basis of race.

Read the Department of Justice’s Motion to Intervene here.

Read the Department of Justice’s complaint here.

Trump Administration Takes Action to Cut Off Funding for DEI, Gender Ideology Overseas

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Today, the State Department issued rules aimed at preventing taxpayer dollars from funding DEI and gender ideology initiatives overseas. 

These rules are a critical step toward ensuring that Americans are not subsidizing discriminatory programs, radical identity politics, and harmful medical interventions on children.

One rule, “Combating Gender Ideology in Foreign Assistance,” adds new requirements to grant awards aimed at ensuring that recipients of State Department dollars do not spend these funds on promoting various tenets of gender ideology, with a particular focus on minors.

In particular, the rule targets organizations that provide sex-denying medical interventions for minors. It prevents funds from going toward any organization that “either offers counseling regarding sex change surgeries, promotes sex change surgeries for any reason as an option, conducts or subsidizes sex change surgeries, promotes the use of medications or other substances to halt the onset of puberty or sexual development of minors, or otherwise promotes transgenderism.”

The rule also cites the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) 2025 report, which found that there is no solid evidence to support sex-denying medical interventions on minors, and that these interventions may impose serious long-term harms (such as infertility) on children. 

This rule reflects the reality that so-called “gender-affirming care” is harmful to children, and that the federal government has no business funding these harms.

Another rule, “Combating Discriminatory Equity Ideology in Foreign Assistance,” adds requirements to grant awards with the intent to prevent recipients of State Department funds from engaging in discriminatory DEI practices.

Under the rule, recipients of certain State Department awards agree that they will not “promote discriminatory equity ideology, engage in unlawful DEI-related discrimination, or provide financial support to any other foreign NGO or IO that conducts such activities.”

The rule defines “Discriminatory equity ideology” as an “ideology that treats individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals, and minimizes agency, merit, and capability in favor of generalizations.”

Considering how many health-focused organizations are funded by State Department grants, this rule will provide essential protections to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not subsidizing initiatives that degrade the quality of healthcare and that subject patients to unequal treatment.

Do No Harm applauds these rules. 

It’s critical that the federal government not only cuts off funding for radical identity politics, but ensures recipients of grant awards are not themselves ideological actors.

Do No Harm Report Debunks Prominent ‘Racial Concordance’ Study 

Salt Lake City, UT; January 27, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm released a report entitled “Debunking Frakes and Gruber’s New Study on Racial Concordance.”

The report refutes a recent study, authored by economists Michael Frakes and Jonathan Gruber, that misleadingly claims racially diverse military medical facilities improve care for black patients. However, the study fails to actually examine whether black patients have better outcomes when treated by black doctors, and buries a key finding that undermines the thrust of the study’s conclusion.

Frakes and Gruber instead offer two flawed explanations for the study’s claims: 1) black doctors teach their peers how to better connect with black patients, and 2) the presence of black doctors in hallways increases black patients’ trust in non-black providers. 

“We cannot allow politically motivated activists to push debunked racial theories that have no positive impact on patient care,” said Jay Greene, Director of Research for Do No Harm. “Studies like this are designed to codify DEI doctrine to pave the way for re-establishing affirmative action and enshrining race-based hiring. The report ignores the very question it purports to answer: whether black patients actually fare better with black doctors. Our report systematically exposes the study’s shoddy methodology and baseless conclusions. Americans of all races and backgrounds deserve high-quality medical research, not political ideology disguised as science.”

Flaws in the Frakes & Gruber Study:

  • The study never actually examines whether black patients fare better when treated by black doctors.
  • The study buries the finding that black patients actually do best when treated by non-black doctors in facilities that happen to have more black doctors, which undermines the claim that black patients need to be served by black doctors
  • The study not only relies on debunked research but also fails to cite systematic reviews that already found no evidence that racial concordance benefits patients.

Do No Harm’s report also notes that co-author Jonathan Gruber is infamous for bragging about relying on the “stupidity of the American voter” while helping mislead the public with opaque analyses to pass the Affordable Care Act.

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.

Medical School’s DEI Scholarship Is Cause for Alarm

A.T. Still University (ATSU) is offering a scholarship through its Diversity Department ostensibly intended to support “students who learn and serve in diverse, underserved, urban, and rural communities across the globe.”

The Graduate Health Professions Scholarship (GPS) promises recipients “significant financial support during their residential education.”

But the program description, while not explicitly limiting eligibility to applicants of certain racial groups (and even containing a non-discrimination disclaimer), contains some suspicious language. Additionally, the scholarship encourages recipients to engage in DEI activities.

First, the scholarship is intended to “attract and educate students whose life contributions and experiences are consistent with the ATSU mission to serve in underserved areas.”

This language in itself may seem benign, but consider the following context: the scholarship next includes a definition of “underrepresented minorities.”

“A. T. Still University defines ‘Historically Underrepresented’ and ‘Underrepresented Minorities (HUGs)’ as those persons identified by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).”

The HRSA defines underrepresented minorities as “American Indian or Alaska Native”; “Black or African American”; “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander”; and “Hispanic.”

Although the scholarship application criteria does not explicitly contain language discriminating on the basis of race or sex, it’s certainly alarming that the scholarship would include this definition at all, and it’s likewise unclear what purpose it serves.

And there’s a further wrinkle: per a brochure containing a list of scholarship recipients on ATSU’s website, none of the listed recipients appear to be white or Asian.

The scholarship also contains requirements stating that recipients are encouraged to participate in “campus-wide Diversity Department programs and initiatives,” and must “meet with [the] program administrator or [the] D&I (Diversity & Inclusion) representative at least once monthly.” 

Needless to say, this is more than a little troubling, especially when viewed in conjunction with the other language in the program description.

ATSU should make clear that its scholarship is available to all, and ensure that it is not seeking to award the scholarship only to members of certain racial groups. 

A non-discrimination disclaimer alone isn’t going to cut it.

Virginia Legislation Would Subject Nurses to ‘Bias Reduction Training’

Legislation introduced in Virginia this year could force healthcare professionals to endure ideological programming under the guise of combating “unconscious bias.”

One bill, SB 22, would require certain healthcare professionals to submit to “bias reduction training” in order to maintain their licenses.

Specifically, the bill directs “the Board of Medicine and Board of Nursing to require certain licensees to complete bias reduction training as part of their continuing education and continuing competency requirements for licensure.”

The legislation explicitly identifies “unconscious racial bias [that] affects care during pregnancy and the postpartum period” as a target.

This legislation is not new. Indeed, a very similar bill was introduced last year that also sought to target “unconscious bias”; then-Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed the bill in May.

The notion that unconscious or implicit bias contributes to any real world impact is unsupported by solid evidence.

The tests used to evaluate or identify implicit bias fail to meet widely-accepted standards of reliability and validity and have been found to be “poor predictors” of real-world bias and discrimination. 

And what’s more, Ohio State University psychology professor emeritus Hal Arkes described the test as “an extremely feeble predictor of behavior.”

It’s common sense that healthcare professionals should not be forced to undergo training grounded on false premises that accuses them of racism.

Virginia’s healthcare boards best serve their state when they focus on ensuring healthcare professionals adhere to standards of clinical excellence, and not when they inject dubious and divisive scientific concepts into healthcare education.

It’s also worth noting that SB 22 is just one of a flurry of bills introduced this year that seek to advance DEI and related discriminatory practices within the Commonwealth.

These efforts are already attracting the attention of the Department of Justice’s Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon.

Given this scrutiny, it would be wise for state officials to avoid expensive lawsuits and ensure that taxpayer funds do not go toward the costs of defending racist laws.

Medical School Program Abandons Admissions Standards for Black Applicants

Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, has adopted a new approach to pursue its goal of racial diversity in medicine: abandoning academic standards for black applicants altogether.

The Black Learners Admissions Pathway, a program with the ostensible goal of helping “facilitate entrance into the undergraduate medical education program for Black students,” requires black applicants no objective measures of academic achievement.

The program requires applicants to identify as either “Black/African Nova Scotian”; “Black/African Canadian”; “or Black/African.”

“There is no minimum grade point average (GPA) required under the Black Learners Admissions Pathway, but the Black Learners Admissions Subcommittee may use general GPA requirements as a point of reference during the holistic review process,” the program description states.

The Dalhousie Medicine Admissions Committee requires applicants of other racial groups to have a GPA of 3.3.

Likewise, there is no minimum MCAT threshold for black applicants, though an MCAT score completed within the past 5 years is required. 

“No MCAT thresholds are required for eligibility under the Black Learners Admissions Pathway but the Black Learners Admissions Subcommittee may use general MCAT requirements as a point of reference during the holistic review process,” the program description states.

The minimum MCAT score for applicants who don’t enjoy this exemption is 492.

Dalhousie operates a similar program for indigenous students as well: the Indigenous Admissions Pathway, in which MCAT scores are optional.

Meanwhile, applicants in the Rural Applicant Pathway also do not need to meet a minimum MCAT threshold, but still must meet the GPA requirements.

As mentioned above, the Black Learners Admissions Pathway is intended to “diversify the healthcare workforce by applying equitable admissions processes for Black learners.”

Of course, imposing one standard on certain racial groups and another standard on other racial groups is the opposite of fair: it’s textbook discrimination.

In the zero-sum game of medical school admissions, one applicant’s benefit is another’s burden. But more than that, admitting applicants who are definitionally less qualified will almost certainly degrade patient care. 

Dalhousie cannot produce the best possible physicians when it explicitly seeks to recruit applicants who fail to meet minimum standards of academic performance.

Additionally, qualified black physicians may have to endure the perception that their admission to medical school was due to their race, and not their competence and merit.

Dalhousie should abandon its discriminatory practices and focus on providing the best possible medical education to all, no matter their race.

Medical College of Wisconsin Pushes Students to Engage in Climate Activism

The Medical College of Wisconsin sent a survey to its medical students intended to educate them about the effects of climate change on patient health, with a particular focus on nutrition.

The presentation accompanying the survey, titled “Climate Change, Gastroenteritis, and Malnutrition: What Physicians Should Know from the Inside Out,” discusses the various ways that “planetary health” can impact individual health, such as through pollution. Additionally, the presentation encourages students to get involved with climate activist groups.

The presentation contains the following learning objectives:

  1. Understand that human health and planetary health are directly linked, and climate change is a public health crisis
  2. Define climate justice and list populations most vulnerable to climate change
  3. Describe how climate change is changing the distribution and increasing prevalence of vector borne gastrointestinal infections
  4. Understand the impact of climate change on food security and associated nutrient deficiencies, particularly in vulnerable populations
  5. Identify that plant-based diets are mutually beneficial to patient health and planetary health

A keen reader may have noticed that many of these objectives have very little to do with the practice of medicine and seem more geared toward an audience of policymakers in the public health sphere. 

Indeed, the presentation encourages students to track their own “carbon footprint,” also discouraging the consumption of red meat for its comparatively higher impact on emissions.

How this prepares students to become the best possible physicians is anyone’s guess.

Next, the presentation outright encourages students to “get involved” with local activist efforts.

The presentation links to the website of Healthy Climate Wisconsin, a policy and advocacy organization that pushes for legislation and candidates targeting the oil and gas industry.

It’s also worth noting that Healthy Climate Wisconsin’s website includes an “Anti-Racism” webpage that includes the following pledge: “We strive to make each of our working groups and each of our projects advance anti-racist ideals. By keeping Black, Indigenous, and People of Color at the forefront of climate action and transition plans we can help improve health disparities and create new economic opportunities for these vulnerable populations.”

That page also links to an article calling for racial discrimination in the distribution of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The presentation even urges students to engage in “Local advocacy with elected representatives.” 

It should be common sense that the classroom is not the appropriate venue for activist recruitment efforts, much less a venue for radical identity politics.

It is simply not the province of medical schools to instruct students on these issues.

Rather, this presentation is yet another example of increasing mission creep, where all sorts of political, social, and cultural activism are justified under the auspices of improving public health.

That the course encourages students to involve themselves in climate activism represents a significant straying from the actual purpose of medical education.

Trump Administration Re-Opens Investigation into Cleveland Clinic’s Racially Discriminatory Patient Programming

SALT LAKE CITY, UT; January 16, 2026 – The Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (HHS-OCR) has re-opened a civil rights investigation into the Ohio-based Cleveland Clinic after a complaint was filed by Do No Harm and its legal counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL). The complaint was originally filed in August 2024; and while HHS-OCR initially opened an investigation into the Clinic, the matter was closed by the Biden Administration just days before President Trump took office.

Recently, the Trump Administration granted Do No Harm’s request for reconsideration and will re-open its investigation into the alleged discrimination at Cleveland Clinic.

Do No Harm’s complaint focuses on two specific examples of race discrimination at Cleveland Clinic: the Minority Stroke Program and the Minority Men’s Health Center. Both programs were specifically purposed for “preventing and treating [health conditions] in racial and ethnic minorities” through education, prevention, treatment, and other assistance and resources for addressing stroke and diabetes (and other stroke risk factors) as well as men’s health conditions and mental health issues.

Quotes:

“The Department of Health and Human Services is correct to revisit our complaint against Cleveland Clinic’s discriminatory programs and we welcome their efforts,” said Do No Harm Chairman Stanley Goldfarb, MD. “Injecting racial discrimination into treatment practices is unlawful, irresponsible, and leads to misunderstanding of disease and disease risk. Left unchecked, programs like the ones subject to our civil rights complaint erode public trust in medicine and will lead to worse health outcomes for all Americans.”

“Rather than treat all patients equally and provide care based on individual treatment needs, Cleveland Clinic unlawfully decided to allocate care and resources to certain patients because of their race,” said WILL Associate Counsel Nathalie Burmeister. “Now, there will be consequences. WILL is proud to work with Do No Harm in bringing true equality to the health care space.”

Additional Background:

Race-based health equity initiatives, like Cleveland Clinic’s programs, aim to filter and view health outcomes through a racial lens, assuming that one’s race says all the doctor needs to know about who needs medical care the most. However, beyond race, any number of demographic filters could be applied concerning almost any characteristic to compare and address health outcomes—to name a few, height, eye color, birth order, handedness, entertainment preferences, where one lives, etc. The availability of any particular demographic does not make it an appropriate, relevant, comprehensive, or lawful standard for evaluating and addressing health outcomes.

Cleveland Clinic’s race-based Minority Stroke and Minority Men’s Health Center programs ultimately seek to balance the scales of mortality and morbidity based on nothing more than bare reliance on a patient’s skin pigmentation. This interest in race for race’s sake is not only immoral, but also illegal.

Read More:

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.

American Family Physician’s DEI-Centric Restructuring

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Like many medical institutions, American Family Physician (AFP), the journal of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), fully embraced a commitment to radical identity politics in the wake of the “racial reckoning” of the summer of 2020. 

For example, AFP and other family medicine journals issued a statement in October 2020 pledging a commitment to DEI in order to combat the supposed evils of “systemic racism” in healthcare and medicine.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

“We will encourage and mentor authors from groups underrepresented in medicine. We will ensure that content includes an emphasis on cultural humility, diversity and inclusion, implicit bias, and the impact of racism on medicine and health. We will recruit editors and editorial board members from groups underrepresented in medicine.”

But, whereas many have since quietly removed their more explicit pledges to engage in political advocacy, DEI programming, or even overt racial discrimination, AFP’s are not only front and center but have been added to as recently as 2025.

Currently, AFP maintains a statement on the “Diversity” webpage advertising its work “developing goals to increase recruitment of authors, editors, and peer reviewers from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups.”

It’s unclear exactly how AFP aims to achieve this goal, but at first blush, this sure sounds like racial discrimination. 

Also present on AFP’s Diversity webpage are a host of resources that evince the journal’s commitment to DEI and radical identity politics.

One resource, a 2022 editorial titled “Improving Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in AFP,” includes admissions that the journal has actively tried to inject DEI into its content offerings.

“Regarding our editorial processes, we are increasing content on health disparities, racism, and social determinants of health; reevaluating the use of language regarding race, ethnicity, and gender; collecting anonymous demographic information from our authors after publication as we seek to improve representation and diversity; and encouraging mentorship of underrepresented minorities in medicine and medical writing,” the editorial states. “A dedicated editorial team meets regularly to discuss specific and general matters related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).”

Additionally, AFP appointed a “Medical Editor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” in order to “support clinical content and curriculum”; the person appointed to this role, as of last year, appears to still hold that position.

It’s also worth noting that later this year, the AAFP is hosting an event titled the “National Conference of Constituency Leaders” which features representatives from several key “constituencies” of the organization.

These constituencies include “BIPOC physicians and those physicians who are supportive of and aligned with the issues faced by this group” and “Physicians who identify as LGBTQ+ and those physicians who are supportive of and aligned with the issues faced by this group.”

This appears to be yet another example of an approach to medicine more concerned with group identity than clinical excellence.

Do No Harm has frequently cataloged the AAFP’s infatuation with DEI; in 2024, we reported on AAFP’s efforts to recruit subject matter experts for its continuing medical education content, with proposals required to be “DEI-focused.”

And in 2023, the AAFP’s vice president of medical education bemoaned the Supreme Court’s decision that found race-based university admissions unconstitutional, instead calling for alternative means of racial discrimination.

All in all, it seems like AAFP and its journal are still committed to pushing divisive, discriminatory, and radical ideology and practices.

Family physicians, and patients by extension, suffer as a result.

Boston Medical Center Maintains ‘Glossary’ Chock Full of Radical Ideology

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Boston Medical Center currently maintains on its website the “Glossary for Culture Transformation” (“the Glossary”), an exhaustive list of terms referring to various tenets of DEI ideology. Examples include “anti-racism,” “privilege,” “Latinx,” and many, many others.

As the Glossary webpage makes clear, these terms are intended to advance the DEI goals of Boston Medical Center, Boston University Medical Group, and related educational institutions.

Here’s how the Glossary webpage describes the creation of the Glossary:

“The Office of Equity, Vitality, and Inclusion, in partnership with Boston Medical Center, Boston University Medical Group, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston University Goldman School of Dental Medicine, and Boston University Graduate Medical Sciences collaboratively developed this Glossary as a tool to align our goals of justice, equity, and belonging and strengthen our collective understanding. Establishing shared language is foundational to creating common understanding by expanding our awareness of the world beyond our individual identities and experiences.”

So, in other words, all of these clinical institutions are culpable for injecting radical identity politics into healthcare through the Glossary.

The definitions of these terms are further evidence of this ideological goal.

For instance, the definition of “anti-racism” is sourced explicitly from Ibram X. Kendi, a radical proponent of racial discrimination on the basis of remediating past injustices.

“The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination,” Kendi has said. “The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

It’s also worth noting that as recently as January 2025, Kendi maintained a research center at Boston University.

The definition of “privilege,” meanwhile, falsely states that “White people in America are privileged in that their race will not limit their economic or educational prospects.”

Yet, Do No Harm has documented countless instances of medical schools explicitly excluding white and/or Asian students from educational opportunities on the basis of race.

And in medical school admissions, white and Asian students often face much longer odds of admission than their black and Hispanic counterparts with equivalent GPAs and MCAT scores.

Indeed, the Glossary contains several terms that appear laudatory of efforts to engage in racial discrimination. 

The definition of “racial justice” reads as follows: “The creation and proactive reinforcement of policies, practices, attitudes, and actions that produce equitable power, access, opportunities, treatment and outcomes for all people, regardless of race.”

It should go without saying that any attempt to equalize “outcomes” among racial groups will invariably involve favoring some racial groups over others. Many such discriminatory policies are even justified under the guise of health equity or similar concepts.

Other entries are more overtly political. 

The entry for “decolonization” includes a definition of decolonization as “the active resistance against colonial powers, and a shifting of power towards political, economic, educational, cultural, psychic independence and power that originate from a colonized nation’s own indigenous culture. This process occurs politically and also applies to personal and societal psychic, cultural, political, agricultural, and educational deconstruction of colonial oppression.”

What this has to do with Boston Medical Center’s (ostensible) goal of providing the best possible medical care is anyone’s guess. It seems instead to be evidence that Boston Medical Center is content to serve as a vehicle for radical political activism, at the expense of a focus on clinical excellence.

What’s more, as the Glossary’s webpage states, “the Glossary for Culture Transformation is a living document to be revised on an annual basis.”

If that is indeed true, then Boston Medical Center has been doubling down on its commitment to radical ideology.

Hopefully, it will rediscover fundamental principles of medical ethics – to strive to “do no harm” and provide the best possible care – and ditch identity politics for good.

Do No Harm Co-Authors Guide for Jewish Parents on Dangers of So-Called ‘Gender-Affirming Care’

Editor’s note: Do No Harm is a membership organization representing healthcare professionals, students, patients, policymakers, and concerned citizens of all faith backgrounds. We were invited to provide our medical expertise to assist leaders of a faith community in crafting guidance to address the challenges of gender ideology. Do No Harm’s contributions to this report are intended to provide the best possible medical and scientific information.

SALT LAKE CITY, UT; January 14, 2025 – This week, Do No Harm released a guide co-authored with the Coalition for Jewish Values entitled Rethinking Gender Affirmation. The guide is designed to properly inform observant Jewish parents on the challenging issue of gender dysphoria and expose progressive Jewish organizations injecting radical gender ideology into their teachings. The guide unites Jewish scriptures and sound science to debunk and reject so-called “gender-affirming care” on minors.

Organized in three key parts, the guide addresses the distress parents of gender-confused children face and provides answers to the influx of misinformation on the topic of gender dysphoria.

Part I: Sex and Gender in Jewish Law, clarifies in detail what the Jewish scriptures have to say on the topic of gender.

Part II: What the Science Says, addresses and debunks several popular scientific myths surrounding transgenderism and provides an overview of the lack of evidence supporting pediatric gender medicine.

Part III: Problems and Solutions, explains how education plays a key role in the transmission of values from one Jewish generation to the next and identifies the actors who continue to inject gender ideology into Jewish communities.

“Jewish parents of gender distressed minors have had nowhere to turn for scientifically sound and doctrinally-based guidance when navigating their child’s gender confusion,” said Ian Kingsbury, Director of Do No Harm’s Center for Accountability in Medicine. “Our first-of-its kind guide offers an alternative to the deluge of misinformation parents are fed by radicalized medical professionals pushing a pro-transgender agenda. The guide uses both medicine and Jewish scripture to strip the activists’ narrative and expose the lies of the radical gender cult.”

“We are delighted to collaborate with Do No Harm to bring this resource to the public,” said Rabbi Moshe B. Parnes, Southern Regional Vice President of the Coalition for Jewish Values. “In an environment where activists erroneously claim that Judaism recognizes ‘a wide range of gender identities,’ it is important for rabbis and laypeople to be equipped with the facts: that male and female are Divine creations, that these are unaffected by psychological difficulties, and that there are groups attempting to cloud these eternal truths in the vulnerable minds of our precious next generation. This is an important document that we hope will be studied broadly.”

Click here to read the report by Do No Harm and the Coalition for Jewish Values.

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.

Do No Harm and Alliance Defending Freedom Host Rally on Supreme Court Steps

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Today, Do No Harm and Alliance Defending Freedom hosted a rally on the steps of the Supreme Court as justices heard oral arguments in two cases, Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J, that concern Idaho and West Virginia laws restricting participation in girls’ and women’s sports to the female sex.

The cases have enormous implications not just for girls’ and women’s sports, but for truth, fairness, and the extent to which unscientific and ideological conceptions about sex can influence education and athletics. These laws recognize the reality of biological sex and protect girls from the harms of gender ideology.

The rally achieved a massive turnout, and featured a number of prominent speakers such as House Speaker Mike Johnson, Congressman Byron Donalds, and athlete and advocate Riley Gaines, as well as Do No Harm’s Chloe Cole, Dr. Travis Morrell, Dr. Steve Ward, and Dr. Jared Ross.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, who praised the work of Do No Harm in her remarks, sounded the alarm over the rise of gender ideology in schools across the country.

“Gender ideology has transformed once great academic and athletic institutions into embarrassments, with tragic consequences for our women and for our girls,” she said.

“They reflect a real, troubling pattern of harm inflicted by radical forces looking to reshape our culture,” she continued.

Do No Harm Patient Advocate Chloe Cole shared her story of being subjected to dangerous sex-denying medical procedures as a child under the guise of gender ideology. She explained how the Supreme Court’s decision could open the door to further intrusion of gender ideology into education, healthcare, and elsewhere.

“[The Court is] being asked to rule on something that is even more fundamental: basic biological reality between the two sexes,” she said. “These nine justices are all that stands in the gap.”

“When biological reality is forsaken, it not only allows harm towards vulnerable children, but collateral damage to the rights of a whole sex,” she continued, characterizing gender medicine as “a complete lie.”

“If the biggest court in the land can defend the duty to protect children, then it must also protect all girls, and all women: our privacy, our safety, and our sports,” she concluded, referencing the Court’s decision in United States v. Skrmetti and urging the Court to “choose science, choose truth.”

Figure 1. Dr. Travis Morrell speaks on the steps of the Supreme Court.
Figure 2. Dr. Steve Ward speaks on the steps of the Supreme Court.

You can watch full coverage of Do No Harm and ADF’s rally here.

Inside the courthouse, much of the arguments – and questions from the justices – centered on the biological differences between girls and boys that serve as the basis for the Idaho and West Virginia laws.

Associate Justice Samuel Alito posed questions that got to the heart of the case: the reality of biological sex.

“For Equal Protection purposes, what does it mean to be a boy or a girl, or a man or a woman?” Alito asked attorney Kathleen Hartnett, representing the plaintiff in Little v. Hecox.

However, Hartnett failed to provide a definition.

Alito also stressed the fundamental physical differences between male athletes and female athletes in questions to the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

“What do you say about them? Are they bigots?” Alito asked. “Are they deluded in thinking they are subjected to unfair competition?”

In sum, the outcome of these cases will have enormous consequences not just for girls’ and women’s sports, but will be a referendum on truth, fairness, and basic common sense.

As Do No Harm explained in our amicus brief, sex is real and binary.

Do No Harm urges the Supreme Court to recognize biological reality and decide these cases accordingly.

UC Davis Admissions Dean Discusses Ways to Continue DEI Despite Legal Obstacles

“If success means meeting society’s needs, we’re probably looking at the wrong measures at this point […]: grade point average, MCAT, publications. There’s not a lot of evidence that those measures actually improve health outcomes in society.”

Those are the words of Mark Henderson, MD, the Associate Dean for Admissions at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine. Henderson made the comments at an October 2024 grand rounds session hosted by Stanford Medicine’s Obstetrics and Gynecology department titled “Cultivating Physicians Our Nation Needs After Affirmative Action Ended.” 

There, Henderson discussed ways that medical schools and graduate medical education programs could continue to engage in diversity initiatives and discriminatory practices in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which found race-conscious admissions to be unconstitutional.

A key point: Henderson’s comments are particularly noteworthy as California has banned race-conscious admissions for decades, and yet UC Davis has succeeded in diversifying its student body through its “socially accountable” admissions practices (more on that later).

One doesn’t need to read between the lines of Henderson’s comments: he is explicitly calling for schools to devalue objective metrics of academic achievement like GPA and MCAT scores in favor of criteria that favor qualities such as diversity. As Henderson later says, the mission of UC Davis Medical School is to “matriculate future physicians who will address the diverse health workforce needs of our region.”

Of course, Henderson’s premise is just not true; MCAT scores, for example, are predictive of performance on Step 1 and Step 2 of the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam or USMLE, which is in turn predictive of clinical performance.

Figure 1. A slide comparing UC Davis’ admissions strategy to “Moneyball.”

To justify this DEI-centric approach to admissions, Henderson makes the argument that a diverse healthcare workforce actually leads to better health outcomes for patients.

Figure 2. A slide touting the supposed benefits of diversity in the healthcare workforce.

Henderson, without explicitly using the words “racial concordance,” alludes to the notion that patients (particularly patients belonging to racial minorities) will experience better health outcomes when treated by physicians of the same race.

As Do No Harm has repeatedly shown, this argument, commonly employed to justify discriminatory diversity hiring practices in healthcare, is bunk. Five out of six systematic reviews find that racial concordance has no impact on health outcomes.

That hasn’t stopped Henderson and co., of course. Indeed, UC Davis tied for the lowest marks in the Center for Accountability in Medicine’s Medical School Excellence Index, which assesses medical schools on their commitment to academic achievement and merit over radical ideology.

To achieve its diversity goals, Henderson touted UC Davis’s “socially accountable” admissions strategy, which aims to deemphasize measures of academic achievement in favor of measures that appear to be proxies for diversity.

This behavior isn’t new from Henderson and UC Davis: Do No Harm previously reported on a 2022 webinar in which Henderson, discussing UC Davis’s admissions process, stated that the “overrepresentation” of Asian physicians is addressed through an “institutional diversity and inclusion policy that explicitly and publicly states our priorities for recruitment based on the statistical gap between California’s population and the physician workforce demographic of underrepresented groups.”

Next, Henderson took care to stress that the Supreme Court’s decision did not apply to graduate medical programs, such as residency programs, and encouraged them to continue to engage in diversity initiatives consistent with local laws and federal civil rights law.

Again, Henderson encouraged programs to de-emphasize metrics of academic achievement, which Henderson characterized as being “confounded” by wealth and “privilege.”

Figure 3, A slide discussing legal advice for graduate medical education programs.

Next, Henderson offered ways for programs to mitigate their legal risk by cloaking DEI initiatives in terms that may obscure their racial focus. 

“Words matter. ‘Underrepresented in medicine’ is a term that means that the population, whatever the identity is, is underrepresented relative to the population,” Henderson said. “That’s better than ‘underrepresented minority,’ which refers to racial identity.”

Figure 4. A slide discussing ways for GME programs to mitigate their legal risk.

And finally, Henderson concluded by encouraging residency program directors to balance the legal risk of discriminatory practices and policies with the goals of diversity.

“Try to light some fires,” he said, urging residency programs to follow their (DEI-centric) missions. 

Well, there is one surefire way to mitigate risk: stop engaging in discriminatory diversity initiatives that treat individuals on the basis of their race, rather than their merit. 

Unfortunately, this seems to be a bridge too far for Henderson and UC Davis.

American Board of Internal Medicine Doubles Down on DEI

This week, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), which certifies physicians in the field of internal medicine, sent out an update to its members summarizing the fall meeting of its Infectious Disease Board.

But that update, among other things, also contained a statement doubling down on ABIM’s DEI practices.

“ABIM remains firmly committed to advancing health equity, as reflected in a joint statement by the ABIM Board of Directors and the ABIM Foundation Board of Trustees dated June 2025,” the update reads.

“ABIM continues to work in the areas outlined in the Equity Statement: developing health equity content for assessments, ensuring that assessments are fair, and researching to advance assessment strategies,” the update continues. “ABIM also maintains collaborations with medical specialty societies working to advance health equity. During this session, staff highlighted both the progress achieved and the challenges that remain in ABIM’s ongoing health equity efforts.”

The Health Equity Statement makes clear that ABIM is injecting “health equity” into the certification process: “We include health equity content in our assessments, based on science and evidence related to health disparities.”

It’s unclear exactly what this means: Health equity is a nebulous term, but often refers to practices that seek to equalize health outcomes between racial groups, often through racial discrimination. 

Moreover, the premise for these practices is that racial disparities in health outcomes are explained by systemic racism or some other factor that is best addressed through political/social change. 

Regardless of the exact manner in which ABIM is infusing “health equity” into its assessments, that these topics are included in the certification process is cause for alarm.

But that’s not all.

Indeed, ABIM maintains a webpage dedicated to its commitment to health equity, replete with various DEI resources and evidence of the organization’s DEI activities.

“Like many organizations across the United States, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) and ABIM Foundation (ABIMF) are at a turning point, where we move from being ‘passively non-racist’ institutions to committing ourselves to be an ‘actively anti-racist’ influence in health care,” that webpage reads. 

Anti-racism, defined by its most prominent proponent Ibram X. Kendi, refers to a set of practices that explicitly seek to remedy past discrimination through present racial discrimination.

Internally, ABIM appears to be adhering to these principles. For instance, it describes its various committees and councils as aiming “to maintain a composition that reflects the diversity and complexity of the physician and patient populations that certification serves.”

ABIM’s 2020 statement on racial justice also includes a pledge to engage political activism: “we pledge actively to do our part in opposing and dismantling systems and policies that cause harm to our patients and disproportionately affect those in Black and Brown communities.”

And Do No Harm previously reported on ABIM’s “DEI Strategic Plan” (which has since been removed from the ABIM website).

The plan’s goals included: 

  • “Develop and implement programs that address the racial and ethnic disparities in health care”; 
  • “Influence the education and training of board certified internists to equip them with the skills and awareness to recognize and prevent healthcare disparities and to promote health equity”; and 
  • “Intentionally create and foster partnerships to exponentially expand the impact of ABIM’s efforts in addressing systemic racism and disparities in health care, in the healthcare profession, in the provision of health care and the outcomes of that care.”

As an organization that certifies physicians, ABIM’s chief concern should be the competency of medical practitioners.

Instead, it seems that ABIM has decided that “health equity” and other DEI concerns should be its focus.

And, as the recent update demonstrates, ABIM is doubling down.