Despite the widespread backlash against “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) measures in healthcare, true believers continue to introduce ideology into medical practice. No other takeaway is possible when one examines a course currently available in the “Anti-Racism Coalition” educational series at the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences (GW SMHS).
That course, “Moving Beyond Bystanding … to Disrupting Racism,” exists, according to its website, to “change racist culture, policies, and practices” in hospitals and other medical institutions.
“No matter what role you have,” the website promises, “this training will allow for you to recognize your responsibility in contributing to an antiracist institutional culture.”
The course’s intellectual framework is the so-called D.I.S.R.U.P.T. model, created by GW SMHS medical educator Maranda C. Ward, pediatrician Olanrewaju Falusi, and student collaborators. In a recent post on the medical-news site MedPage Today, Ward et al. describe D.I.S.R.U.P.T. as “a mnemonic that offers a set of personal and shared considerations for building anti-racist clinical care.”
Among the authors’ specific recommendations is that physicians’ rounds should end with a “bias check”: “Did we consider whether bias influenced this care plan?”
The authors also propose that “[p]atterns in patient satisfaction, readmission rates, or delays in follow-up can be analyzed by demographic group.”
According to Ward et al., the issue of racism in medicine is not merely a matter of a few bad actors. Rather, the authors see it as a systemic and structural issue requiring collective accountability. They note approvingly that training participants “grasped bias as a collective issue” and that “teams can create structured prompts to prevent bias and institutionalized racism.”
This is bad medicine. It focuses on ideology over substance, blaming every racial disparity on bigotry while ignoring genetics, comorbidities, behavior, lifestyle, and other well-documented factors.
Moreover, Ward et al. rely on widely debunked “implicit bias” ideology in the plugging (and, presumably, the designing) of their course, writing that “[r]esearch on implicit bias makes it clear that unconscious stereotypes shape physician behavior.”
The problem with this assertion is that there is no evidence that “implicit biases” explain racial disparities in health outcomes. Moreover, the tests used to evaluate these unconscious but ostensibly ubiquitous prejudices fail to meet widely accepted standards of reliability and validity.
As Do No Harm has previously noted, “a 2013 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that Implicit Association Tests (IATs) were ‘poor predictors’ of real-world bias and discrimination.”
Yet these are the very tests on which Ward et al. base their “antiracist” ideology.
Other elements of Ward’s D.I.S.R.U.P.T. defense are just as problematic.
Over and over, the GW professor and her co-designers draw a parallel between antiracist practices and such evidence-based medical developments as hand hygiene.
But such a comparison strains credulity. Hand hygiene is based on testable theories of germ transmission and infection control. Antiracist medicine, by contrast, is based on anecdotes, political theory, and critical social justice.
So, apparently, is GW SMHS’s course. According to the aforementioned MedPage Today article, a two-part D.I.S.R.U.P.T. training “showed improvement in participants’ sense of motivation to respond to racism, responsibility to act, and belief in their ability to contribute to equity work.” These results were assessed via “pre/post-data.”
Yet “pre/post” testing is itself methodologically suspect, as a classic meta-analysis by Victor L. Willson and Richard R. Putnam demonstrates. Across 32 studies, Willson and Putnam found a modest but real average effect: taking a pre-test at all tended to elevate post-test scores, including attitude measures.
In other words, not only is D.I.S.R.U.P.T. based on bad science, but its efficacy on its own terms deserves to be called into question. That its creators haven’t thought to do so is further evidence that their motives are political rather than medical.
At present, physicians taking “Moving Beyond Bystanding … to Disrupting Racism” may receive Continuing Medical Education credits for doing so.
Doctors on the hunt for authentic CME should look elsewhere.
The APA’s Radical Division 39 Is a Catastrophe
COMMENTARY DEI American Psychological Association Professional organization Commentary Do No Harm StaffA division of the American Psychological Association has descended into rank antisemitism. Never mind virtue signaling; this is pure vice.
The APA’s Division 39 is the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology. Its members are “professionals who identify themselves as having a major commitment to the study, practice and development of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy.”
A glance at Division 39’s materials reveals a tired preoccupation with leftist buzzwords.
For example, the group’s “Call for Submissions for the 2027 Spring Meeting” invites potential contributors to consider such matters as “colonial domination; imperialism; [and] westernization,” as well as “(dis)ability; capitalism; neoliberalism; social and economic class/mobility; white supremacy; proximity to whiteness; intelligibility; race; gender; sexuality; age; feminist studies; madnesss [sic]; [and] critical race theory.”
Yet these vogue concerns might occasion mere eye rolling were it not for the presence of even less savory commentary. As a note from the conference chair makes clear, this year’s call for submissions was intentionally sent on “Nakba Day,” the May 15 anniversary of “the Nakba of 1948 — an event of mass killing, disablement, and dispossession of the Palestinian people of their homeland.”
This is grotesque behavior.
To begin with, it is historically illiterate. The “Nakba” (literally, “catastrophe”) observed by Palestinians and their sympathizers refers to the 1948 displacement of Arabs from the Holy Land. But this event occurred only because Arab armies invaded Israel, and hundreds of thousands of Jews were thrown out of Arab countries at the same time.
However, even if Division 39’s rhetoric and timing were historically or ideologically defensible, the group would still have no business wading into choppy political waters. The work of the APA is to “promote psychological science and knowledge to benefit society and improve lives.” It is not to engage in preening political commentary.
This is not the APA’s first foray into antisemitism. As materials from the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s ongoing investigation of the APA allege, “Jewish APA members have reported being harassed and ostracized by their colleagues within the APA and at APA events because of their Jewish identity, their efforts to speak out again antisemitism, and their Zionist beliefs.”
Additionally, the APA “has offered educational credits for members to attend conferences where speakers endorsed ‘violence against Jews and Israelis; antisemitic tropes; Holocaust distortion; minimization of Jewish victimization, fear, and grief; and pathologizing of Jewish people’s connection to their indigenous homeland.’”
Not for nothing did the Anti-Defamation League and the Academic Engagement Network urge the APA to address its antisemitic practices in a May 2025 communication. As that document points out, “APA Division 39 President Lara Sheehi defended the D.C. shooting that killed Israeli embassy staffers Sarah Milgram and Yaron Lischinsky, outrageously describing the attack as a justified response to what she called a ‘genocidal’ state.”
These are not the actions of an organization and division that are thinking clearly. Rather, they illustrate the surrender of an institution to its worst impulses and voices.
The time has come for the APA to clean up its act. American psychologists, their patients, and the public deserve better.
Do No Harm and Defending Education File Federal Civil Rights Complaint Against Oregon Agencies for Racial Discrimination
Uncategorized Oregon DEI State government Press Release Executive Do No Harm StaffSALT LAKE CITY, UT: May 28, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm and Defending Education jointly filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against two Oregon state agencies for discriminating on the basis of race in programs or activities that receive federal funding.
The complaint alleges that both Oregon’s Department of Education and Higher Education Coordinating Commission violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by taking race into account when funding public schools.
“Oregon’s use of student racial demographics to allocate public funding for K-12 schools and universities is immoral and violates the Constitution and federal antidiscrimination law. Political activists have long pushed institutions to support equity over equality, and Oregon’s system of race-based funding to remedy vague claims of ‘societal discrimination’ is a clear example,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “Oregonians deserve to know their tax dollars support equal educational opportunities for all. However, the state’s current system distributes public funding using racial quotas and race-based ‘bonuses’ that prioritize certain student racial demographics while actively disfavoring white and Asian racial groups. Our complaint shines much-needed light on these discriminatory practices, and we look forward to the Department of Education holding Oregon accountable.”
“Oregon’s Department of Education and Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission appear to be violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by administering programs that explicitly discriminate on the basis of race,” said Sarah Parshall Perry, Vice President and Senior Legal Fellow at Defending Education. “The Department oversees more than 1,200 public K-12 schools and over 560,000 students, and it receives more than $150 million annually in federal grant funding. But it operates a Charter School Equity Grants program, which explicitly funds charters that have at least a 65-percent minority population — something that looks very much like an illegal race-based quota. The Commission fares no better, as it awards taxpayer funds to schools based on the number of minority students who graduate from each. That kind of race essentialism is odious to the Constitution, and we look forward to the Department of Education’s investigation into how the state is using its educational funds.”
Oregon’s Department of Education is a state agency that oversees and provides funding to public schools, including public charter schools. Pursuant to state law, the department restricts “Charter School Equity Grants” to schools having at least 65 percent of their student bodies composed of prioritized groups, including certain preferred racial or ethnic groups. Similarly, Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission is a state agency that distributes funding to Oregon’s seven public universities and 17 community colleges. Through the Public University Support Fund, the commission distributes “bonus” taxpayer funds to schools based on the number of completed degrees by “underrepresented” students, which considers specified, prioritized racial and ethnic groups.
The complaint argues that Oregon’s racially discriminatory funding schemes are based on “amorphous claims of societal discrimination” repeatedly rejected by the United States Supreme Court. Because Oregon’s racial classifications cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny, the state’s discrimination violates the “color-blind” mandate of Title VI and the Equal Protection Clause.
Both Do No Harm and Defending Education have done notable work to rid education of racial discrimination and political bias and instead create a system centered on merit and excellence. This complaint was filed as part of the organizations’ efforts to hold institutions and state government agencies accountable to federal law.
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.
The DEI Two-Step
COMMENTARY Ohio, Texas DEI Private university, Professional organization, Public university Commentary Do No Harm StaffThe Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023) did not sever in one blow the head of the DEI goliath. Indeed, as a look back at a 2024 University of Houston panel series makes clear, a number of medical-education leaders who all but promised to ignore the Court are still highly placed in the American medical establishment.
“Justice and Health for All: The Future of Affirmative Action in Legal and Medical Education” took place less than 10 months after the Court’s SFFA decision affirmed that racially biased university-admissions processes “cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause.”
Like many campus panel discussions held in the wake of that decision, this one contained some doozies.
These do not sound like the words of physicians and administrators who are eager to follow the Supreme Court’s guidance (and relevant law) on colorblind admissions. Rather, the language sounds like that of authorities who are determined to implement beloved DEI processes as long as they can reasonably expect to get away with it.
Now contrast these boasts and pledges with the formal statements made by the institutions in question.
Thus do the steps in the dance become evident. To begin with, institutions formally promise to follow federal and state law and Supreme Court jurisprudence.
But also: the actual men and women “on the ground” who insist on DEI practices remain, including possibly McDougle, whose active LinkedIn page still describes him as the Wexner Medical Center’s chief diversity officer despite Ohio State’s DEI rollbacks.
This is not an argument that particular professionals should lose their jobs. If DEI partisans agree to follow the law and abide by that promise, then there is no reason for institutions to dispense with their medical services.
Still, it is difficult to ignore the near-constant drip of stories indicating that medical schools continue to resist merit-based admissions despite legal developments that mandate as much. Something has got to change.
Eventually, a new conclusion may become necessary. If reformers are going to force medical schools to change their ways, we may need some new doctors in charge.
DOJ: By Its Own Admission, Yale Med School Illegally Discriminates Against White, Asian Applicants
COMMENTARY Connecticut DEI Yale University Medical School, Private university Commentary Ian Kingsbury, PhD, Jay Greene, PhDAs Yale celebrated its 325th commencement last week, the institution’s medical school faced new scrutiny for alleged racial discrimination in admissions. The Department of Justice sent a letter to Yale School of Medicine on May 14 notifying it that “the Department finds that Yale continues to intentionally discriminate against applicants based on their race.”
That letter presents evidence that black and Hispanic students were significantly more likely to be admitted than white and Asian students with the same MCAT scores and grade point averages, an outcome that “cannot be explained by a coincidence.” Specifically, “Yale’s use of race resulted in a Black applicant being as much as 29 times higher odds of getting an interview for admission than an equally strong Asian applicant with similar academic credentials.”
Read the full piece at The Federalist.
Do No Harm Files FCC Comment on Gender-Ideology TV Programming
COMMENTARY Gender Ideology Federal government Commentary Executive Do No Harm StaffYesterday, Do No Harm submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) a “Comment on Further Empowering Parents to Protect Their Children and Make Informed Choices About the TV Programs Their Children Watch.”
Consistent with its mission, Do No Harm submitted this comment for three reasons, First, to highlight that the current TV ratings system is inadequate to protect children from gender-ideology programming that permeates television media. Second, to recommend appropriate content labels that accurately identify gender-ideology programming. And third, to note the imbalance in makeup of the TV Oversight Management Board (TVOMB), which includes — without counterbalance on, among other things, gender-ideology issues — biased organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National PTA.
Please read the full comment here or below.
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Oregon’s School of Public Health Is Making the Obesity Epidemic Worse
COMMENTARY Oregon DEI Oregon Health and Science University Medical School, Public university Commentary Do No Harm StaffWhat happens when parts of the American public-health apparatus are commandeered by ideologues pushing yet another victimization narrative? Thanks to the “Fat Justice Working Group” at the Oregon Health & Science University-Portland State University School of Public Health (SPH), we may soon have an answer.
“The purpose of the Fat Justice Working Group,” its website declares, “is to engage students, faculty and staff … in learning, activities and advocacy to reduce weight stigma and anti-fat bias in ourselves, our School and society at large.”
Beneath that word salad is a meatier agenda: “We imagine a future where public health is openly and firmly committed to ending discrimination and other oppression of people in larger bodies.”
This is sloppy thinking, directly antithetical to the principles of public health.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), for example, defines its mission in part as “enhanc[ing] health, lengthen[ing] life, and reduc[ing] illness and disability.” By presenting obesity as an “oppress[ed]” identity category rather than a treatable medical condition, Oregon’s SPH makes this work more difficult.
We have been here before. Last year, Do No Harm catalogued efforts by the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University to downplay the adverse health consequences of obesity.
For instance, the school hosted a presentation entitled “Introduction to Weight Stigma & Weight Inclusive Care,” the purpose of which was, in part, to “promote a non-judgmental and inclusive environment for patients of all body sizes.”
Unbelievably, the presentation made the assertion that “health and well-being are achievable for all regardless of weight.” One need only read the relevant medical literature to grasp the inaccuracy of this claim.
Medical science demonstrates that obesity correlates strongly with elevated mortality. It is often, in the words of a Ghana Medical Journal article, “a major risk factor for the development of several non-communicable diseases, significant disability and premature death.”
Moreover, as Do No Harm wrote last year, obesity is not an immutable condition. In many instances, obese patients “who lose significant amounts of weight have been shown to live longer, with better quality of life.”
None of this means that men and women suffering from obesity deserve public censure or scorn. Physicians and other public-health officials should treat all patients with respect, even as they bring their expertise to bear on conditions that lead to significant medical complications.
In short, the medical establishment needs to help people struggling with obesity to make lifestyle improvements or, in some cases, to choose appropriate pharmacological or surgical interventions. Obese patients need assistance, not a team of social-justice warriors telling them that everything is okay.
Faculty and staff at Oregon’s SPH must know this. Yet the work of the Left is always and everywhere to expand the ranks of the “oppressed,” thus granting political power to those who would “rescue” them.
In medicine, this has often meant fixating on identity and compassion at the expense of patient care. Yet evidence-based medical science should not be deemphasized by those who wish primarily not to give offense.
In the normal course of things, such a tendency is often merely obnoxious. When it helps convince doctors not to tell necessary truths, however, the consequences can be deadly.
When Advocacy Masquerades as Neurology
COMMENTARY DEI Medical association, Medical Journal Commentary Kurt Miceli, MD[Editor’s note: This piece originally appeared as a letter to the editor in response to the American Academy of Neurology’s (AAN) position statement “A Roadmap to Neurologic Health Equity.” That article is available here.]
It is the opinion of this reader that the AAN’s Roadmap to Neurologic Health Equity takes a one-way view of evidence to advance an agenda that extends beyond neurology, resembling an advocacy group more than a medical society rooted in science and patient care.
The paper, for instance, claims that Black men are “least likely to receive treatment” for headaches. It argues this by citing Burch et al., which reports prevalence—not treatment—data.
Further, Charleston and Burke found “no major racial/ethnic differences in abortive or prophylactic treatment” for migraines in the US ambulatory care setting.
Similarly, for Parkinson disease, the roadmap attributes disparities to “structural barriers,” without engaging other potential contributors. Yet one study cited noted that Black participants may underreport this ailment because they misconstrue parkinsonian symptoms for normal aging. Another offered that lower utilization of deep brain stimulation may, in part, reflect “a clinically appropriate difference.”
Read the full piece in Neurology.
Does the University of Illinois College of Medicine Support ‘Equitable’ Grading?
COMMENTARY Illinois DEI Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffThe University of Illinois College of Medicine’s “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” page is every bit as politicized, unscientific, and unserious as one might fear. Yet a deeper dive into the page’s resources reveals a grading scheme that, if actually operative, should terrify those eager to see future physicians held to appropriate academic standards.
UICOM has campuses in Chicago, Peoria, and Rockford. According to the Peoria campus’s website, the three branches combined educate one in six Illinois doctors.
Thus, it is no mere curiosity that the institution’s DEI office directs site visitors to such medically irrelevant frippery as a “land acknowledgement.” Nor is it harmless that the DEI website points medical students toward various “DEI Initiatives/Opportunities,” among them the university’s startlingly progressive Gender and Sexuality Center.
Rather, these errors in judgment matter. By introducing ideology into medical education, they blur what ought to be a tight focus on foundational science, clinical skills, and hands-on training.
They may also be paving the way for even more damaging experiments.
Tucked away at the bottom of UICOM’s DEI page is a list of “Resources,” among them “Teaching for Equity and Social Justice.”
Following that link and selecting “Assessment & Grading Practices” then “Equitable Assessments & Grading Practices” brings up a radical scheme whose enactment would seriously compromise authentic academic evaluation.
Specifically, the page in question urges instructors to embrace grading practices that “respect the diversity of students’ social identities as well as the diversity of student interests.”
Such grading practices, the page continues, focus on “reducing assessment biases” — e.g., those that “unfairly penaliz[e] students based on their race, gender, socio-economic status, etc.”
Moreover, the page declares, grading performed in this manner “recognize[s] that students have varying lived experiences and background knowledge.” This language should be familiar to anyone who has previously encountered critical educational theory, a Marxist framework obsessed with power dynamics and systemic oppression.
Among the page’s specific grading recommendations are that instructors should consider “[r]e-assessing [student work] without penalty & [allowing] multiple attempts.” They should consider “[r]ethinking the grading of participation” and “[i]ncorporating personal learning goals.”
Missing from these recommendations is any acknowledgement that medical students must regularly master difficult material that has its source in scientific reality. Students’ “lived experiences” are, in these instances, less important than what (or whether) they have actually learned.
To be clear, the webpage in question was produced by the University of Illinois Chicago’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence, not UICOM itself. Nevertheless, the College of Medicine promotes this material as a resource and thus presumably affirms the ideology behind it.
UICOM should publicly clarify whether it supports the use of “equitable assessments” in medical-school classrooms. If it does, the institution has a serious problem on its hands.
Do No Harm Sues Racially Discriminatory Doctors’ Directory
Uncategorized New York DEI Press Release Judicial Do No Harm StaffSALT LAKE CITY, UT; May 19, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm filed a lawsuit against the online directory Find A Black Doctor and its owner for violating federal civil rights law by discriminating against physicians based on race. The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
“Racial discrimination in medicine is unlawful and undermines trust between patients and providers,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “By excluding qualified doctors based solely on their skin color, Find A Black Doctor indefensibly robs some physicians of valuable advertising exposure and deprives patients of the opportunity to discover capable providers without regard to race. The idea that patients have better outcomes when treated by doctors of the same race — known as racial concordance — is a pernicious and debunked myth that only sows distrust in the doctor-patient relationship. Do No Harm remains committed to rooting out all identity-based political programs in medicine.”
Find A Black Doctor is an online directory that limits eligibility to black physicians and dentists in active clinical practice. According to Do No Harm’s complaint, the directory bars non-black doctors from valuable advertising exposure and potential opportunities to work with new patients. By design and in effect, it advances a model of racial segregation, prioritizing race over medical skill, judgment, and experience.
Background:
Click here to read the complaint.
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.
GW’s Med School Hasn’t Abandoned ‘Antiracist’ Education
COMMENTARY Washington DC DEI Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffDespite the widespread backlash against “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) measures in healthcare, true believers continue to introduce ideology into medical practice. No other takeaway is possible when one examines a course currently available in the “Anti-Racism Coalition” educational series at the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences (GW SMHS).
That course, “Moving Beyond Bystanding … to Disrupting Racism,” exists, according to its website, to “change racist culture, policies, and practices” in hospitals and other medical institutions.
“No matter what role you have,” the website promises, “this training will allow for you to recognize your responsibility in contributing to an antiracist institutional culture.”
The course’s intellectual framework is the so-called D.I.S.R.U.P.T. model, created by GW SMHS medical educator Maranda C. Ward, pediatrician Olanrewaju Falusi, and student collaborators. In a recent post on the medical-news site MedPage Today, Ward et al. describe D.I.S.R.U.P.T. as “a mnemonic that offers a set of personal and shared considerations for building anti-racist clinical care.”
Among the authors’ specific recommendations is that physicians’ rounds should end with a “bias check”: “Did we consider whether bias influenced this care plan?”
The authors also propose that “[p]atterns in patient satisfaction, readmission rates, or delays in follow-up can be analyzed by demographic group.”
According to Ward et al., the issue of racism in medicine is not merely a matter of a few bad actors. Rather, the authors see it as a systemic and structural issue requiring collective accountability. They note approvingly that training participants “grasped bias as a collective issue” and that “teams can create structured prompts to prevent bias and institutionalized racism.”
This is bad medicine. It focuses on ideology over substance, blaming every racial disparity on bigotry while ignoring genetics, comorbidities, behavior, lifestyle, and other well-documented factors.
Moreover, Ward et al. rely on widely debunked “implicit bias” ideology in the plugging (and, presumably, the designing) of their course, writing that “[r]esearch on implicit bias makes it clear that unconscious stereotypes shape physician behavior.”
The problem with this assertion is that there is no evidence that “implicit biases” explain racial disparities in health outcomes. Moreover, the tests used to evaluate these unconscious but ostensibly ubiquitous prejudices fail to meet widely accepted standards of reliability and validity.
As Do No Harm has previously noted, “a 2013 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that Implicit Association Tests (IATs) were ‘poor predictors’ of real-world bias and discrimination.”
Yet these are the very tests on which Ward et al. base their “antiracist” ideology.
Other elements of Ward’s D.I.S.R.U.P.T. defense are just as problematic.
Over and over, the GW professor and her co-designers draw a parallel between antiracist practices and such evidence-based medical developments as hand hygiene.
But such a comparison strains credulity. Hand hygiene is based on testable theories of germ transmission and infection control. Antiracist medicine, by contrast, is based on anecdotes, political theory, and critical social justice.
So, apparently, is GW SMHS’s course. According to the aforementioned MedPage Today article, a two-part D.I.S.R.U.P.T. training “showed improvement in participants’ sense of motivation to respond to racism, responsibility to act, and belief in their ability to contribute to equity work.” These results were assessed via “pre/post-data.”
Yet “pre/post” testing is itself methodologically suspect, as a classic meta-analysis by Victor L. Willson and Richard R. Putnam demonstrates. Across 32 studies, Willson and Putnam found a modest but real average effect: taking a pre-test at all tended to elevate post-test scores, including attitude measures.
In other words, not only is D.I.S.R.U.P.T. based on bad science, but its efficacy on its own terms deserves to be called into question. That its creators haven’t thought to do so is further evidence that their motives are political rather than medical.
At present, physicians taking “Moving Beyond Bystanding … to Disrupting Racism” may receive Continuing Medical Education credits for doing so.
Doctors on the hunt for authentic CME should look elsewhere.
Newsweek Is Wrong About ‘Racially Concordant Care’
COMMENTARY DEI Medical Journal, News Media Commentary Ian Kingsbury, PhD, Jay Greene, PhDIn 2020, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) made waves in reporting that black newborns were more likely to survive when under the care of black physicians. In a report published by Do No Harm, we speculated that the correlation was spurious. Analysis from economists George Borjas and Robert VerBruggen confirmed our suspicions, and author correspondence retrieved through public-records request suggests that the study conclusion may not have been an oversight but an effort to preserve preferred narratives.
In penning a defense of DEI in medicine, the editors at Newsweek acknowledge that the PNAS study has been debunked. But they cite three other studies that claim to find benefits of racial diversity in medicine, arguing that, based on those studies, there appears to be promise for the hypothesis that racially concordant care is beneficial for minority patients.
That conclusion is incorrect.
First, those three studies must be properly situated within the broader literature. There have been — to our knowledge — six systematic reviews of race concordance in medicine. Systematic reviews consider what the weight and quality of evidence indicate about a research question. When it comes to race concordance, five of six reviews conclude that evidence does not support the concordance hypothesis, while the sixth features easily identifiable methodological errors.
Further, the three studies cited in defense of DEI warrant deep skepticism. As The Economist observed in reporting on the debunking of the PNAS study, “science that fits the zeitgeist sometimes does not fit the data.” We have previously reviewed each of these studies. The problems with all three are fairly obvious once you consider all of the facts.
The first study mentioned involves an experiment in Oakland where black patients were randomly assigned to one of six black or eight non-black physicians before agreeing to undergo preventative health screening tests.
In the first stage of the experiment, patients are shown a photo of a doctor on a tablet and asked about whether they would like to participate in four preventative health screenings. Before meeting with the doctor, patients state which of the screenings they would like to receive. At this stage of the experiment — which provides the strongest, least corruptible test of the hypothesis — willingness to participate in the preventative screenings does not vary according to the race of the doctor on the tablet.
Differences in the Oakland experiment are only observed in the second stage of the experiment, when the doctors depicted on the tablets visit the patients and attempt to persuade them to receive the screenings. At that stage, more patients assigned to visit with a black doctor and who had initially declined the screenings relented and accepted three of the four screenings compared to patients assigned to non-black doctors. The problem is that the second stage of experiment isn’t a test of race: It’s a test of the power of persuasion among six physicians who happen to be black compared to eight who are not. Whereas race would have been salient in the first stage (when patients only saw a photo), it’s impossible to decode whether it was a factor at all in the second stage. Moreover, the study acknowledges that “[t]he doctors, subjects, and field staff were not informed that doctor race was being randomized, though they could have inferred it” (p. 4082). As we wrote in our critique, “If the doctors were aware that the study was examining the effects of racial concordance, which seems likely, it is possible that sympathy with the racial concordance hypothesis would exceptionally motivate the 6 black doctors while undermining the motivation of the 8 non-black doctors to get patients to agree to interventions.”
The second study mentioned by Newsweek involves observing patients across the Military Health System and observing that, for black patients, transferring to a facility with a higher share of black physicians is associated with filling and renewing prescriptions with greater fidelity, as well as lower mortality.
Notably, the concordance effect (i.e., black patients being treated by black physicians) is never assessed directly. Data buried in an appendix clarifies the likely reason. That is, the effect the authors observe is driven by better outcomes among black patients who are served by non-black physicians in facilities with a higher proportion of black doctors. Suffice it to say, the idea that black doctors are no more effective than others at treating black patients but that their presence makes others more effective at treating black patients strains credibility. Precisely why they observe the pattern that they do is unclear, but making logical sense of the data indicates that a higher share of black doctors is the result of something that causes better relative outcomes for black patients rather than being the cause of those better outcomes.
The final study is the easiest to debunk. The authors analyze surveys taken by patients about their experience at a recent outpatient visit. The authors observe and dwell upon the fact that black patients are more likely to give the highest possible score to black doctors on a question about “the likelihood of your recommending this care provider to others” compared to non-black doctors. Notably, however, the average score given by black patients to black doctors doesn’t differ from the average score given to non-black doctors. In other words, the outcome is sensitive to considering only highest possible score versus all other possible scores and falls apart when considering the full range of outcomes. Other seemingly notable findings that are glossed over in the paper are that this same phenomenon is only observed among black patient-provider dyads and that there is no difference for white, Hispanic, or Asian patients when it comes to whether they would offer the most enthusiastic recommendation of a racially concordant provider compared to other providers. Further, the survey features 10 questions, including ones seemingly more important than the recommendation question. For example, it asks about “information the care provider gave you about medications (if any)” and “instructions the provider gave you for follow up care (if any).” The recommendation question was the only one of the 10 in which black patients were more likely to give the highest possible score to black doctors compared to other doctors. Altogether, then, the study fixates on a conclusion that is sensitive to how survey outcomes are operationalized, glosses over the fact that the phenomenon is observed in only one group, and minimizes the fact that concordance benefit is observed in only one of 10 survey questions.
Overall, the evidence is clear: Merit ought to stand alone in determining access to medical school. But you don’t need to take our word for it — just ask black patients themselves. In multiple national surveys, the vast majority of black patients say they have no preference for the race of their doctor. Of course they don’t. Like anyone else, black patients are focused not on race but on getting excellent medical care. And, like anyone else at the bedside, they prioritize technical competence, thoroughness, clear communication, and overall quality far higher than demographics.
Universities Are Looking for Loopholes to Avoid Disclosing Woke Syllabi
COMMENTARY Idaho, Minnesota DEI, Gender Ideology Public university, State government, University System Commentary Do No Harm StaffTwo universities are attempting to dodge public-records requests by asserting that course syllabi are “copyrighted and protected intellectual property” or “trade secrets.” Such responses proceed from a misapplication of state law and risk undermining the principles of transparency and public oversight of public institutions.
Last month, the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) filed public-records requests for copies of syllabi and other course materials at the Universities of Minnesota (U of M) and Idaho (U of I).
Among the courses in question at U of M were “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Health” and “Sexual and Gender Health in Clinical Practice.”
Similarly, AAF’s requests to U of I sought coursework materials for “Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies” and “Ecology of Health & Medicine-Foundations 1-4.”
AAF has valid investigative reasons to pursue these materials. Recent reporting has suggested that courses in the U of M system are “steeped in radical left-wing ideology, including content promoting Marxism, ‘decolonizing Palestine,’ Queer theory, and the Black Lives Matter movement.”
Reporting about U of I, meanwhile, has alleged that courses at that institution may have received improper exemptions to a state law banning curricula that “require[] or otherwise compel[] a student to enroll in a DEI-related course.”
Both states have a legal obligation to fulfill public-records requests under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act and the Idaho Public Records Act. Unfortunately, the schools in question have thus far refused to comply with AAF’s requests.
On April 9, U of M replied that the university is “unable to produce copies for release” because the syllabi “are copyrighted and protected intellectual property.” The institution offered instead to “provide [AAF] with an opportunity to inspect the data in-person.”
For its part, U of I responded on April 3 that the syllabi in question are “trade secrets” and are thus exempt from disclosure.
Both universities are wrong. As AAF’s demand letter to U of M makes clear, the Minnesota Court of Appeals “breezily rejected” an identical argument by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system in Nat’l Council on Teacher Quality v. Minnesota State Colleges & Universities (2013), finding that government agencies “may not assert copyright ownership to deny members of the public their right to inspect and copy government data” when a third party’s reason for requesting documents “will constitute fair use.”
AAF’s demand letter to U of I, meanwhile, points out that, under Idaho Code §74-107(1), “trade secrets” are limited to information that is the subject of reasonable efforts to “maintain its secrecy.” Course syllabi widely distributed to thousands of students do not meet that definition.
AAF has given both institutions until June 12 to comply with the law and produce copies of the course materials in question before pursuing “its rights to seek all appropriate relief [in] court.” If either school continues to evade basic transparency laws in favor of baseless arguments, they may find themselves on the losing side of a lawsuit.
Do No Harm Publishes Open Letter Urging Social Work Accreditor to Ditch DEI Standards
COMMENTARY DEI accrediting organization Commentary Do No Harm StaffToday, Do No Harm published an open letter to the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), an accrediting body for social work education programs, requesting the organization remove DEI mandates from its accreditation standards.
The letter identifies numerous examples of DEI-related concepts that CSWE forces programs to inject into their curricula. Do No Harm urges CSWE to commit to removing all references to anti-racism, DEI, and other related concepts from its accreditation standards, and requests a response by June 13, 2026.
Read the full letter below.
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Major Health Systems Do Digital Damage Control Following Do No Harm Civil Rights Complaints
COMMENTARY DEI Health system Commentary Do No Harm StaffTwo major healthcare systems have altered their websites to remove indications of racial discrimination following complaints by Do No Harm filed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (HHS-OCR).
Until recently, Appalachia’s Valley Health System (VHS) advertised a “Minority Healthcare Scholarship” of up to $5,000 to “patients pursuing careers in medicine, health sciences, or health administration who identify as a member of a minority racial or ethnic group.” Among the qualifying racial categories suggested by VHS were “Black/African-American, Latinx, Asian-American, Indian-American, [and] Native/Indigenous American.”
Now, however, the webpage associated with the scholarship is no longer functional. Nor does the site’s search tool produce results related to the award.
These changes appear to have been made on or around April 30. In its May 1 coverage of Do No Harm’s complaint, The Center Square noted that “[t]he page for [the] scholarship is no longer active.” Also seemingly removed was “a Facebook post that promoted it.”
That’s not all: recently, health consortium giant Kaiser Permanente added to its “Center for Black Health and Wellness” webpage a note claiming to welcome “members of any race or ethnicity.”
That disclaimer did not exist before Do No Harm’s filing of a civil rights discrimination complaint with HHS-OCR.
Such DEI-related housekeeping is not uncommon. For example, as Do No Harm reported late last month, the Stanford University School of Medicine recently altered its website to remove evidence of a commitment to DEI.
The University of Arizona College of Medicine at Tucson did something similar last year, quietly removing from its online pages content that overtly pledged support for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
As Do No Harm’s civil rights complaints against Kaiser Permanente and VHS point out, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 broadly prohibits federally funded healthcare systems from engaging in racial discrimination.
Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act is similarly clear: “an individual shall not … be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under, any health program or activity, any part of which is receiving Federal financial assistance.”
If VHS and Kaiser Permanente have concluded that Do No Harm’s complaints have merit, then they should say so and implement real change. Hiding public-facing scholarship materials from view or adding “superficial” disclaimers against a multitude of indications to the contrary are no substitutes for contrition.
The LCME Is Right to Refocus Medical Education on Medicine
COMMENTARY DEI Liaison Committee on Medical Education Accreditiing organization, Medical association Commentary Kurt Miceli, MD[Editor’s note: This piece originally appeared as a comment in response to Uché Blackstock’s “Medical Schools Must Continue to Teach Students About Structural Barriers to Care” in STAT. That article is available here.]
Uché Blackstock’s piece hinges on a narrow premise: that unless physicians are formally trained in matters of “equity,” they will overlook the real-world constraints their patients face. She therefore laments the Liaison Committee on Medical Education’s decision to drop its requirement that medical schools teach about equity—i.e., the non-medical social and political realities that may affect patients’ lives.
Yet Blackstock fails to account for two basic truths. First, clinicians have long done the listening she wants, without being subjected to inherently politicized equity-based training. Inquisitiveness about a patient’s unique circumstances has always been key to medicine. For generations, physicians have been taught to take a social history. Good doctors listen, adapt plans pragmatically, and focus on what they are uniquely trained to do: assess, diagnosis, and treat the patient before them. Empathy emerges from clinical competence, not ideological instruction that supplants scientific rigor.
Read the full piece at STAT.
A Pedagogy in Search of Substance
COMMENTARY DEI Medical Journal Commentary Kurt Miceli, MDEditor’s note: This commentary was originally submitted in response to “Antiracism Pedagogy in Medical Education, published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The journal rejected the submission.
The New England Journal of Medicine’s Perspective “Antiracism Pedagogy in Medical Education” (published April 4, 2026) illustrates how parts of academic medicine have wandered away from anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology toward an antiracism framework that remains nebulous at best and divisive at worst. Even proponents such as Chioma Onuoha and colleagues concede that antiracism teachings are not “standardized within health professions education,” with current practices frequently leading to “poor learner engagement.”[1]
The evidence base is no stronger: outcomes from antiracist interventions remain “unclear,” while implicit bias training has yet to show improvements in clinical care, all while suffering from substantial methodological limitations.[2], [3] That fewer than 8% of NYCAMES registrants completed commitment statements in 2024—a decline of roughly 50% from the year prior—should not be surprising. The disengagement reflects teaching that is ill-defined, weakly evidenced, and lacking in demonstrable outcomes.
Yet, its promotion continues forcefully through academic channels. Wouldn’t medicine—and patients themselves—be better served by refocusing on clinical excellence and evidence-based training rather than an activist pedagogy seemingly devoid of substance?
[1] Onuoha C, Tsai J, Khazanchi R. Using Critical Pedagogy to Advance Antiracism in Health Professions Education. AMA J Ethics. 2024;26(1):E36-47. doi: 10.1001/amajethics.2024.36.
[2] Blanchet Garneau A, Lavoie P, Bélisle M, et al. Outcomes of antiracist pedagogy in health professions education: a scoping review. Adv in Health Sci Educ 2026;31:341–360. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-025-10448-1.
[3] Vela MB, Erondu AI, Smith NA, Peek ME, Woodruff JN, Chin MH. Eliminating Explicit and Implicit Biases in Health Care: Evidence and Research Needs. Annu Rev Public Health. 2022;43:477-501. doi: 10.1146/annurev-publhealth-052620-103528.
Is ‘Mission-Aligned Selection’ the New Workaround for Race-Based Admissions?
COMMENTARY Vermont DEI Association of American Medical Colleges, University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine Medical association, Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffThe Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) is changing the language it uses to refer to its preferred admissions strategies, potentially offering a fig leaf to medical education programs intent on engaging in ideologically motivated or racial admissions policies.
Previously, the AAMC had touted the admissions practice of “holistic review,” which prioritizes softer attributes such as personal background and deemphasizes objective measurements of merit and academic aptitude.
But, as Do No Harm has shown, many medical schools that promote holistic review are also admitting minority students at much higher rates than a merit-only review process would typically produce. Specifically, some of these students are less academically qualified than their peers. This raises questions about whether these schools are using holistic review to engage in racial discrimination. It is especially troubling as the AAMC was long a proponent of racial preferences in admissions, even submitting a brief to the Supreme Court to argue that the practice should continue.
In short, holistic review appears to often be a convenient shield that may enable medical schools to continue engaging in racial discrimination. Now, it seems like the AAMC is rebranding the term.
It is doing so largely through instruction on “Mission-Aligned Selection and Retention” (MASR), a framework designed to help medical education programs use “a program’s mission to define merit and identify [applicants’] competencies, attributes, and experiences aligned with program goals.”
MASR “emphasizes individualized review.” It considers not only an applicant’s test scores and grades but his or her “context” and ability to “contribute to the mission” of the institution.
In other words, MASR allows medical schools to consider applicant criteria that are neither academic nor objective. While an applicant’s moral character should absolutely be relevant to the application process, it’s easy to see how “mission alignment” can be used as a proxy for ideological alignment with the political goals of a medical school. And one needn’t be a cynic to worry that such a framework could be used to dodge race-neutral admissions standards.
The Supreme Court anticipated this possibility. Indeed, in the majority opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”
But Roberts continued, “universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.”
As Do No Harm has previously explained, “holistic review” risks exactly that error. The practice “emphasize[s] factors unrelated to objective metrics of academic achievement.” It does so, as the AAMC has previously acknowledged, in order to increase racial diversity within medical schools’ student bodies.
Rebranding “holistic review” as “Mission-Aligned Selection and Retention” does nothing to change this reality. Indeed, the AAMC’s latest guidance features at least as many DEI buzzwords as its previous guidance did, employing such racially loaded terms as “equity,” “systems,” and “community” and urging medical schools to admit students with “a broad spectrum of perspectives and experiences.”
To be fair, the new guidance warns that “programs are prohibited by law from considering an applicant’s race … in making selection decisions.” Yet the AAMC’s guidance opens the door for medical schools to do just that under the guise of “mission alignment.”
Already, the ideology behind AAMC’s new guidance is beginning to show up on medical school campuses. During a recent podcast appearance, for example, Dr. Leila Amiri, associate dean for admissions at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine, remarked that, because Vermont is a “social justice-directed kind of place, we look for, collect, and invite to join social-justice warriors in our applicant pool.”
This came just after Amiri noted: “We hear ‘mission alignment’ a lot. […] To me, the entire application needs to make sense.”
If MASR is the new thinking determining medical school admissions, then evaluating applicants fairly and objectively will become increasingly difficult. Instead, medical schools should select candidates on the basis of objective merit, not alignment with progressive priorities.
New Watchdog Report Exposes How Healthcare Providers Can Misrepresent Gender Interventions as Routine Care
COMMENTARY, Press Release, Uncategorized Gender Ideology Medical association Press Release Do No Harm StaffSALT LAKE CITY, UT: April 30, 2026 – Today, medical watchdog Do No Harm released a new report exposing how healthcare providers may be able to fraudulently skirt medical coding rules to receive insurance reimbursement for so-called “gender-affirming care.”
The report, “Spotting Potential Fraud: How Healthcare Providers May Skirt Coding Rules to Get Paid for Child Sex Changes,” warns how providers can misrepresent the medical procedures they perform to pass off transgender medicalization as routine care unrelated to pediatric medical transitions. The report explains the challenge in exposing this type of deception, as in-depth longitudinal clinical reviews are needed to distinguish legitimate medical care from child sex change interventions.
Do No Harm highlights activist groups like WPATH, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania, the Campaign for Southern Equality, and QueerDoc for their role in publicly promoting alternative diagnosis codes — unrelated to gender dysphoria — to facilitate billing and insurance reimbursement for so-called “gender-affirming care.”
“Medical diagnosis codes are being subverted by gender ideologues to avoid proper reporting, hide their activism from scrutiny, and enable potentially fraudulent billing practices,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “Groups like WPATH have publicly promoted the use of misleading diagnosis codes, and our report exposes how providers have financial incentives to do so. By hiding transgender procedures behind codes meant for other conditions, providers are — at minimum — skirting guidelines and ethical standards. Our report highlights the need for greater regulatory oversight and medical review to ensure ICD-10 diagnosis codes are not being fraudulently misused.”
The report identifies eight codes that may be used to hide pediatric medical transitions: 1) Hypopituitarism, 2) Other primary ovarian failure, 3) Testicular hypofunction, 4) Precocious puberty, 5) Other specified endocrine disorders, 6) Endocrine disorder, unspecified, 7) Hormone replacement therapy, and 8) Hypertrophy of breast.
Do No Harm has done extensive work and continues to actively work toward establishing distinct medical diagnosis codes for gender transition, desistance, and detransition. This new report urges payors and regulators, particularly in the states that have legislation restricting such interventions on minors, to remain vigilant of the misuse of ICD-10 codes.
Click here to read the full report.
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.