Florida University Board of Governors Takes the LCME to Task Over Gender Ideology

Last week, Alan Levine, Chairman of the Florida State University System’s Board of Governors, sent a letter to the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

The letter asked the LCME whether it is properly enforcing its accreditation standards given that many of the medical schools it accredits perform sex-denying interventions (such as prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and/or performing surgeries) on minors.

“In reviewing the standards of the LCME, I am curious how our nation’s medical schools have led the way, in the absence of clear evidence, to such broad use of interventional and altering treatments and procedures where permanent disfigurement and irreversible damage to the reproductive systems of minors was so accepted,” Levine wrote.

Levine cited the ever-increasing body of evidence showing that so-called “gender-affirming care” for children poses serious health risks, and that these practices are not supported by sufficient evidence.

The Department of Health and Human Services in 2025 published a comprehensive review of the evidence behind sex-denying interventions for minors and found there to be insufficient evidence to support these practices.

In 2024, the Cass Review, commissioned by the United Kingdom’s National Health Services, found “remarkably weak evidence” to support the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments for gender distressed children.

And earlier this month, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons came out against sex-denying surgeries for minors, citing the lack of evidence behind such procedures.

Under the LCME regime, medical schools and associated hospitals have become vehicles for the child transgender industry; Do No Harm has documented these activities in our Stop the Harm Database. 

It is clearly within the purview of the LCME to ensure that medical schools are not serving as vectors for gender ideology or, worse, committing harmful medical interventions on minors. The LCME should take action to prevent such abuses.

Levine’s letter further pointed out how existing LCME standards, such as its standards related to professionalism, would presumably already prevent medical schools from engaging in this behavior.

“Do professional standards require that there be clear evidence of a benefit before subjecting a minor to permanent, body-altering surgery?” Levine asked. “In the accreditation process, how does LCME ensure this standard is applicable in a manner such that patients are protected from experimental or other procedures which may be driven more by ideology than by clinical evidence?”

Levine’s questions are well worth asking. 

It is the duty of medical education accreditors to ensure that accredited medical schools are not engaging in experimental, unsupported medical interventions that impose massive harms upon society’s most vulnerable. Indeed, it is an ethical predicate for the practice of medicine that physicians “do no harm.”

It’s also worth noting that the LCME is currently proposing changes to its accreditation standards that would remove language requiring medical schools to adopt curricula teaching about, among other things, the “importance of health care disparities and health inequities.”

A group of medical education administrators, physicians, and others, called the Coalition for Structural Competency in Medical Education, organized a petition protesting these changes.

The petition additionally calls for the LCME to incorporate medical education standards that “[c]learly define the knowledge and skills students must learn to understand how social, economic, and political structures affect health and healthcare.”

Needless to say, it’s essential that the LCME does not yield to these demands. It is not the province of medical schools to inculcate students into particular politically-charged explanations of public health phenomena. 

Rather, schools have a duty to train future physicians to provide the best possible medical care.

The LCME’s job is to make sure schools fulfill that duty.

Standing Up to DEI

“We must wash our hands of DEI in medical schools.”

That’s what Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville said in a speech last month at the Alabama Hospital Association’s Healthcare Leadership Summit.

“DEI has plagued our federal government, academic institutions, and other aspects of our society for far too long, all while disregarding merit in the process,” he continued.

We couldn’t agree more. 

It’s encouraging to see elected representatives highlight the issues on which Do No Harm has worked tirelessly, and it’s essential that we all reinforce this simple truth: DEI has no place in medicine. 

In practice, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” invariably involves racial discrimination. Merit is subordinated to skin color and ideology.

Needless to say, that is incompatible with the core mission of medicine.

“We want Alabama students, our brightest young minds from every corner of the state, to have places at Alabama medical schools based on their hard work, talent and qualifications, not on divisive quotas or identity politics,” Senator Tuberville continued. “We want them to stay right here and practice in Alabama, building our communities, serving our rural areas, and strengthening our health infrastructure for generations to come.”

Do No Harm is fighting for these types of merit-based policies. Indeed, back in 2022, we submitted federal civil rights complaints against the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s medical school over three scholarships awarded to students on the basis of race; those scholarships are no longer active.

Recently, we sued the University of California, Los Angeles’s medical school for its race-conscious admissions policy.

And we exposed evidence of racial discrimination in the admissions processes of many other medical schools.

“Let’s reject this poisonous ideology in our education and health care systems once and for all,” Senator Tuberville concluded.

We applaud Senator Tuberville for spreading this message.

Here are the Hospitals Pausing Child Sex Change Procedures in the Wake of Trump’s Executive Order

In January 2025, President Trump signed an executive order halting taxpayer funding of child sex change procedures through federal grants and health benefit programs. By making taxpayer funding contingent on ending so-called “gender-affirming care,” the order incentivizes medical facilities that rely on federal funds to halt their child sex change programs.

Already, hospitals and medical facilities across the country are curtailing minors’ access to these harmful procedures.

Here are the hospitals that have taken action:

  • Denver Health: Announced it will no longer provide so-called “gender-affirming care” to minors.
  • Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C: Announced it will not provide puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors, citing “escalating legal and regulatory risks.”
  • University of Pittsburgh Medical Center: Announced on April 4 that they were no longer offering “gender-affirming care” to individuals under the age of 19.
  • Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Health: Will no longer provide so-called “gender affirming care” to patients under the age of 19.
  • Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU: Will no longer provide so-called “gender affirming care” to patients under the age of 19.
  • University of Virginia (UVA) Health: No longer providing therapy referrals, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and referrals for sex change surgery to minors. [UPDATE: UVA reinstated its “gender-affirming care” program in late February for existing patients.]
  • Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters in Virginia: Announced it would not provide puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for the purpose of child sex changes, according to WAVY. [UPDATE: The hospital announced plans to resume providing sex change services on March 3.]
  • Children’s Hospital Colorado: Announced it will no longer provide cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers to minors.
  • Phoenix Children’s Hospital: Announced it was pausing cross-sex hormone services.
  • Penn State Health: Announced in an internal email that “all gender affirming care including hormone prescriptions and surgeries will be halted for children under 19 and no new patients will be accepted.”
  • Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta: Will no longer provide “gender-affirming care” to minors, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
  • Penn Medicine: Will no longer provide child sex change surgical procedures to individuals 18 and under.
  • Community Medical Center in Missoula, Montana: Is suspending “gender-affirming care services” for people under the age of 18.
  • Children’s Hospital Los Angeles: Will no longer provide so-called “gender-affirming care” to patients under the age of 18.
  • Stanford Medicine: Will no longer perform so-called “gender-affirming surgeries” on patients younger than 19, according to the Los Angeles Times.
  • Rush University Medical Center in Chicago: Announced it will no longer provide so-called “gender-affirming care” to minors.
  • University of Chicago Medicine: Announced it is ending all so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors, according to the Chicago Tribune.
  • Connecticut Children’s: Is “winding down” its gender program for patients younger than 19.
  • Kaiser Permanente: Announced it will pause so-called “gender affirming surgeries” on patients under the age of 19. It will continue to provide all other so-called “gender affirming care,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
  • Yale Medicine: Yale Medicine and Yale New Haven Hospital’s pediatric gender program will no longer offer so-called “gender-affirming” medications to patients under the age of 19, according to CT Insider.
  • Northwestern Memorial Hospital: Northwestern in Chicago has stopped performing so-called “gender-affirming surgeries” on minors.
  • UI Health: The University of Illinois health system suspended so-called “gender-affirming surgeries” on individuals under the age of 19.
  • El Rio Community Health Center: Will no longer fill cross-sex hormone prescriptions for minors, according to the Tucson Sentinel.
  • University of Utah Gender Management & Support Clinic: Announced it would be shutting down following a drop in patients and ended all services effective April 15, 2026.
  • University of Michigan Health: Announced it will no longer provide puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors.
  • Nemours Children’s Hospital: Will no longer provide “gender-affirming care” to new patients, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
  • Advocate Health Care in Illinois: Announced it will no longer prescribe “gender-affirming care medications” to individuals under the age of 19.
  • Nationwide Children’s in Columbus, Ohio: Confirmed it will no longer provide any form of so-called “gender-affirming care.”
  • Corewell Health in Michigan: Announced it will no longer provide cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers to minors.
  • Fenway Health: Will no longer provide so-called “gender-affirming care” to patients under the age of 19.
  • Oregon Health & Science University: Stopped providing surgical procedures to patients younger than 19.
  • Children’s Wisconsin: Paused so-called “gender-affirming care” procedures for minors, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
  • UW Health: Paused so-called “gender-affirming care” procedures for minors, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
  • Lurie Children’s Health: Will no longer “initiate gender-affirming medications” for patients under the age of 18.
  • Rady Children’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Orange County: Will stop providing medical interventions, procedures and prescriptions to minoros.
  • Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital in Tacoma, Washington: Announced plans to shut down its gender clinic.
  • Children’s Minnesota: Announced it would be pausing its gender services effective February 27, 2026.
  • Baystate Health in Springfield, Massachusetts: Announced it will no longer prescribe cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers to patients under 18.
  • NYU Langone Health: Will discontinue its Transgender Youth Health Program.
  • Mount Sinai Hospital in New York: Discontinued its child sex change services, according to reporting from The Advocate.

Editor’s note: This list will be updated as more information becomes available.

 

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.