The ACGME Takes Key Steps to Remove DEI from Accreditation Efforts

Last month, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), the accreditor for medical residency programs, announced it would be suspending enforcement of two key “diversity” requirements.

The requirements were effectively diversity hiring mandates that required residency programs and their sponsoring institutions (e.g. medical schools) to have recruiting and retention policies that aim to boost diversity.

Now, the ACGME is taking steps to excise DEI from its operations.

According to the ACGME’s Annual Update, the ACGME’s Accreditation Data System (ADS), will no longer enable residency programs to submit information on their “diversity” efforts.

Previously, the ACGME asked programs to provide information on what the residency program “will be/is doing to achieve/ensure diversity in resident/fellow recruitment, and retention.”

Other prompts included: “Describe in detail what efforts your specific program is doing to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion for residents/fellows”; “Describe what the program will be/is doing to achieve/ensure diversity in the individuals participating in the program (e.g. faculty members, administrative personnel)”; and “Describe in detail what efforts your specific program is doing to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion for faculty members, administrative personnel, etc.”

Although the ACGME had already officially ended consideration of DEI in its accreditation decisions, these changes are still an important development.

They hamper the ability of the ACGME to consider DEI unofficially, and remove the incentive for residency programs to discriminate.

However, while this is an encouraging sign, DEI and racial discrimination may not be gone from residency programs for good; the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) intends to expand the reach of its residency application tools for the purpose of supporting “holistic review” admissions. 

“Holistic review” is often, in practice, a euphemism for race-conscious admissions and definitionally devalues merit and academic achievement in favor of other characteristics.

Still, the ACGME’s actions are a positive sign that medical education is, slowly but surely, headed in the right direction.

Purdue Sunsets DEI Following Indiana Law Cracking Down on Divisive and Discriminatory Programs

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Purdue University is ending its DEI activities and initiatives, according to a letter sent from Purdue University Provost Patrick Wolfe.

“Acting under the authority of our Board of Trustees, the University is sunsetting historical DEI activities and initiatives, effective today,” the letter reads. “An increasing number of actions and policy measures at both the federal and state level have made it clear that doing so is a necessary part of our future as a public university and a state educational institution.”

Purdue’s decision comes less than a month after Indiana Governor Mike Braun signed into law sweeping legislation, SB 289, that takes aim at a number of DEI initiatives in institutions of higher education and other publicly-funded entities.

Among other things, the law specifically targets “unlawful discrimination” in education, public employment, and licensure, as well as DEI committees in public universities; it also prohibits public educational institutions or employers from taking actions based on an individual’s “personal characteristic[s]” such as their race, religion, color, sex, national origin, or ancestry.

Purdue’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging and related activities in colleges and departments will close, the letter stated, and scholarship programs that are focused on diversity and race will be modified.

Purdue’s health and medical departments were strong proponents of DEI, as Do No Harm recently reported. 

For instance, Purdue’s School of Nursing boasted of its mission to “[uphold] the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion” on the department’s still-operational Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion page, while Margo Monteith, Associate Dean for DEI, proclaimed that the College has “really baked in diversity, equity, and inclusion into the way that we operate.” 

Since the announcement, Purdue has scrubbed several DEI resources from its website, including the biographies of several of its DEI officials and the main campus’s DEI office.
However, other DEI resources, including the university’s Equity Task Force webpage, remain up.

Do No Harm Files Federal Civil Rights Complaint Against Geisinger College of Health Sciences

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RICHMOND, VA; June 5, 2025 – Do No Harm filed a complaint with the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against Geisinger College of Health Sciences over its racially discriminatory summer program.

Geisinger administers the “Center of Excellence MedStart Summer Institute for Prematriculating Program,” which it describes as “[a] comprehensive 8-week summer program for accepted under-represented in medicine (URiM) students to help them transition smoothly into the rigorous demands of medical school.”

However, the program’s eligibility criteria restrict access to the program on the basis of race: “Students must be committed to Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine and identify as URiM and/or another underserved category,” the program description reads.

“Geisinger College of Health Sciences did not learn its lesson after our first federal civil rights complaint to the Office for Civil Rights,” said Do No Harm Senior Fellow Mark J. Perry. “Excluding students from medical programs because of race is blatant, unlawful discrimination. This Summer Institute is just another example of how woke identity politics have infiltrated the healthcare sector.”

As Do No Harm’s complaint notes, “the common understanding and definition of ‘Under-Represented in Medicine (URiM)’ is a category restricted to students who identify as Black, Hispanic, or Native American, but not students who are White, Asian, or Middle Eastern/North African.”

Thus, Geisinger’s program is discriminating on the basis of race in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Do No Harm requests the program either be terminated or open to all students regardless of race, color, or national origin.

“Medical programs must prioritize expertise and merit, not skin color, if they hope to effectively prepare medical students to provide high-quality care for patients,” Perry continued. “Compliance with federal civil rights laws for recipients of federal funds, like Geisinger, is not optional, and there are no ‘if you have good intentions’ exceptions to Title VI. To comply with federal civil rights laws, Geisinger should either terminate the discriminatory Program or open it to all students regardless of race, color, or national origin.”

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. With 17,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries, DNH has achieved over 10,000 media hits in top-tier publications and garnered widespread attention through numerous broadcast news appearances.

Tennessee Eliminates Racial Quotas From Medical Licensing Boards Following Do No Harm Lawsuit

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Fairness and merit triumph in Tennessee.

In April, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed HB 1237 and SB 1084 to remove racial quotas from medical licensing boards after Do No Harm filed two federal lawsuits challenging the quotas’ constitutionality. 

In response to the enactment of these laws, Do No Harm voluntarily dismissed its lawsuits against the state.

Tennessee medical practitioners are regulated by the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners, while the state’s Board of Chiropractic Examiners oversees chiropractors.

In 2024, Do No Harm (represented by Pacific Legal Foundation) filed two federal lawsuits challenging Tennessee’s requirement that the governor consider race when deciding who can serve on these boards. The lawsuits argued that Tennessee’s racial quotas violated the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee.

Following our lawsuit, Tennessee’s lawmakers took action and removed these unconstitutional and discriminatory requirements.

Last month, Arkansas also elected to remove race and gender quotas from state boards and commissions. 

That decision was prompted in part by Do No Harm’s federal lawsuit challenging an Arkansas law that required racial quotas for certain government bodies.

No government official should use an individual’s race or ethnicity to determine who gets the opportunity to serve the public. 

Treating people differently on the basis of race violates the notion of equality before the law.

UCSF Commencement Speech Turns Into Ode to DEI, Gender Ideology

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“Frankly, it’s impossible to be a decent person or a good doctor without advocating for equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging, justice and diversity.”

That statement formed the centerpiece of a University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) speech by UCSF professor Lousie Aronson, MD, at the school’s May 19 commencement.

Rather than celebrating traditional values of excellence, merit, and fairness that have served as the foundation for the practice of medicine for centuries, Aronson’s speech instead became a diatribe against the current administration’s attempts to eliminate DEI from medicine and medical education.

In her speech, Aronson appeared to reference terms identified by The New York Times as language from which the Trump administration has moved away in official government documents and websites. These terms include common signifiers of identity politics like “diversity” and “gender-affirming care.”

Aronson argued the terms “represent concepts that should be integral to how you practice medicine,” addressing the graduating students, and proceeded to go alphabetically through many of the terms.

Aronson first extolled the virtues of DEI to the medical profession; next, Aronson discussed so-called “gender-affirming care.”

“By definition, affirming care validates truths such as patient experience and demonstrates public support of or dedication to something such as practicing medicine with compassion,” she said.

The irony, of course, is that “affirming care” is hostile to the truth, in the sense there is no strong scientific evidence showing the effectiveness of “affirming care” in treating children with gender dysphoria. Meanwhile, there is corresponding wealth of evidence demonstrating the “affirming” approach’s myriad harms.

Aronson then invoked the debunked notion that racial concordance – in which patients are treated by physicians of the same race  – produces better health outcomes.

“Latinos have lower rates of health utilization than other groups,” Aronson said. “They also are more likely to access care and adhere to medical advice when their healthcare provider shares their language preference, ethnicity, or race; and better yet all three.”

As Do No Harm demonstrated in our 2023 report, “Racial Concordance in Medicine: The Return of Segregation,” this theory is bunk. Our report examined the scholarship surrounding racial concordance, and found that four out of five existing systematic reviews of racial concordance in medicine found no improvement in health outcomes, while the fifth is fraught with methodological problems.

This speech is yet another installment in UCSF’s long infatuation with DEI. 

UCSF’s Fresno campus previously maintained a racially discriminatory scholarship for visiting obstetrics students, only changing the discriminatory criteria following a civil rights complaint from Do No Harm.

What’s more, UCSF operated a scholarship program forcing applicants to submit a personal statement expressing their “commitment to working with diverse communities” and their involvement in DEI initiatives to proceed to the next phase of the application process.

This speech is further evidence of how UCSF prioritizes DEI relative to foundational principles of clinical practice.

UCSF should be instilling virtues of merit and excellence in its students so that they can become the best physicians they can be, not inculcating them in regressive political ideology.

The American Psychological Association’s Annual Convention is Chock-Full of DEI

Each year, the American Psychological Association (APA) hosts a convention featuring panels and events on a variety of topics in the field of psychology. 

But this year, dozens of events are heavily focused on DEI and gender ideology, according to a list of planned events that will take place at the August meeting in Denver, Colorado.

This includes panels outright plotting ways to increase diversity in academia and medicine: for instance, one panel, “Empowering Change: Cultivating Diverse Scholars and Creating Spaces of Belonging in Educational Psychology,” discussed ways in which the field could better increased

“Attendees will engage in critical conversations aimed at revising educational competencies and establishing a network that supports the professional growth and well-being of underrepresented groups in academia,” the event description reads.

Other panels focused more on changing the way psychology is practiced to be more accommodating of DEI ideology.

The description for “De-Centering Whiteness in Psychology: Now More Than Ever,” for instance, states that “decentering whiteness in clinical psychology is critical to cultivating meaningful, necessary changes in equitable applications of psychological science.”

It’s not exactly clear how “whiteness” will be “decentered,” but it appears to involve a radical overhaul of clinical psychology to focus less on individual care and more on “equity and justice.”

“A stance of clinical neutrality and an individualistic focus are not only inadequate, they are harmful,” the event description reads. “By deconstructing dominant cultural norms and biases underlying clinical psychology practices, we endeavor to disrupt these harmful dynamics.”

“By adopting a critical framework that centers equity and justice, we reinforce our professions core mission of beneficence by becoming agents of change in creating more just and equitable mental health systems,” the description continues.

This seems like a bad idea; “neutrality” and an “individualistic focus” are likely the traits one looks for in a clinician, and should not be discarded in the name of ideology.

Another event, a symposium titled “Whiteness in Psychology and Education: A Critical Conversation Toward Racial Justice,” features a discussion of how “Whiteness and White supremacy continue to influence sociopolitical dynamics, racial socialization, and daily experiences on college campuses.”

Other events, meanwhile, appear to be platforms for political activism.

“The Impact of Anti-Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Legislation” event’s description states that “[r]epresentation, safety, value for individual differences, educational freedom, and equitable access are currently being stifled and constrained,” thanks to anti-DEI laws.

The aforementioned events are just a small sampling of the various DEI activities taking place at the APA convention. Others include “Decolonizing the Mind: Empirical Perspectives with Diverse and Intersectional Communities,” “Equity in Action: DEI, Sport, and Athlete Mental Health Amid Sociocultural and Legal Changes,” and many more.

The LCME Eliminates Key Diversity Requirement

It’s yet another massive victory against DEI in medical education.

On May 19, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the accrediting body for medical schools, voted to eliminate Element 3.3, a requirement that forced medical schools to have in place “programs and/or partnerships” aimed at achieving diversity.

“A medical school has effective policies and practices in place, and engages in ongoing, systematic, and focused recruitment and retention activities, to achieve mission-appropriate diversity outcomes among its students,” the standard states. “These activities include the use of programs and/or partnerships aimed at achieving diversity among qualified applicants for medical school admission and the evaluation of program and partnership outcomes.”

The LCME attributed its decision to state legislation targeting DEI, arguing that eliminating diversity standards would create “a single set of accreditation expectations with which all schools, regardless of their location and current legislative environment, must comply.”

The LCME’s standards for the 2025-2026 year and 2026-2027 year have been updated and no longer include language encouraging diversity-related initiatives.

However, Standard 7.6, which requires medical curricula to provide “opportunities for medical students to learn to recognize and appropriately address biases in themselves, in others, and in the health care delivery process,” remains in place.

Nevertheless, this is a massive change: medical schools will no longer be forced to maintain DEI programs as a condition of their accreditation.

The decision follows on the heels of a Do No Harm report explaining how accreditors, including the LCME, inject DEI into medical school activities and curricula. In light of Do No Harm’s report, President Trump issued an executive order directly targeting accreditors for imposing divisive and discriminatory policies on higher education.

Also this month, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), which accredits medical residency programs, announced that it would be suspending enforcement of two key “diversity” requirements.

The requirements are effectively diversity hiring mandates that require residency programs and their sponsoring institutions (e.g. medical schools) to have recruiting and retention policies that aim to boost diversity.

Do No Harm Report Exposes Public Universities for DEI Programs Despite State Bans

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RICHMOND, VA; May 28, 2025 – Today, Do No Harm released a new report: Zombie DEI: When Ideology Circumvents State Legislation – and Comes Back To Life Again And Again. The report exposes how medical schools and healthcare education programs in states that restrict DEI like Tennessee and Florida have attempted to circumvent those DEI bans, such as by rebranding their divisive programs. Do No Harm highlights how medical schools have continued to pursue discriminatory and divisive initiatives under the guise of “health equity,” and continued to recruit and teach based on DEI principles like “implicit bias.” 

“Exposing how medical schools resurrect divisive DEI policies at every opportunity is an important part of improving the quality of medical care,” said Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman of Do No Harm. “Rebranding DEI as ‘health equity’ or other such terms is a clear effort to skirt state law in the name of woke ideology. Med schools should drop their DEI agenda. Instead, they should focus on merit as the basis for recruitment and admission decisions, and lawmakers should target schools that fail to comply with state laws.”

The report exposes medical schools and healthcare education programs in seven states that have restricted DEI in higher education: Tennessee, Florida, Texas, Indiana, Kansas, Iowa, and Utah. 

The full report can be found here. 

From the Report: 

  • The University of Tennessee Health Science Center has renamed its Office of Inclusion, Equity, and Diversity to the Office of Access and Compliance. Still, it has continued to publicize ongoing DEI initiatives.
  • The University of Florida had a continuing medical education “Health Equity Day” as recently as February 2025. That course’s objectives included recognizing “structural racism,” and how “structural discrimination” affects clinical practice. 
  • University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern) renamed its “Diversity & Inclusion” office to the “Office of Student Empowerment & Engagement.” UT Southwestern maintains a “Health Equity Scholars Program,” with “training in implicit bias mitigation.” 
  • Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) maintains its “Health Equity, Advocacy and Leadership,” competency as part of its curriculum, where students learn “to recognize the importance of historical, cultural, social and structural contexts of medicine and their relationship to health equity.”
  • The University of Utah continues to post its “Equity, Diversity, Inclusion” statement publicly. The statement reads: “It is imperative for the Office of Student Affairs Assessment & Analytics to prioritize equity, diversity, and inclusiveness.” 

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. With 17,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries, DNH has achieved over 10,000 media hits in top-tier publications and garnered widespread attention through numerous broadcast news appearances. 

Why ‘Gender-Affirming’ Language is So Dangerous for Children

Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued its landmark review of the evidence and ethics behind sex change interventions to treat gender dysphoria in children. 

The review, among other things, makes the compelling case that the terminology employed by advocates for child sex change interventions implicitly assumes the benefits of these interventions. “Gender-affirming care,” for instance, has a positive connotation, whereas terms like “bottom surgery” obscure the grisly nature of the actual procedure, removal of the testicles with degloving and inversion of the penis.

This language, the HHS report argues, precludes an honest assessment of the harms associated with child sex change interventions, and leads to a dangerous clinical protocol.

Take the insistence of using “assigned sex” rather than simply sex. Here’s what the HHS report authors write:

“Assigned sex at birth” is not a harmless euphemism. It suggests an arbitrary decision— not unlike “assigned seating”—rather than the observation of a characteristic present long before birth, namely the child’s sex. Moreover, if the phrase “assigned sex” were intended merely as a gentler way of referring to sex in conversations with patients and families, one would expect more direct language to be used in the specialty medical literature. In professional contexts, where clarity is paramount, euphemisms are generally avoided. Yet “assigned sex” is ubiquitous in clinical and academic publications. Not only that: use of such terminology is now mandated by certain medical journals. The American Psychological Association (APA) style guide, for example, classifies “birth sex” and “natal sex” as “disparaging terms” which problematically “imply that sex is an immutable characteristic.” As law professor Jessica Clarke observes, “‘Sex assigned at birth’ is not a euphemism for ‘biological sex’ but a critique of the very concept.”

The logic is simple: by using language that “affirms” the patient’s belief that they are the opposite sex while avoiding language that accurately reflects biological reality, physicians are already accepting the initial premises of “gender-affirming care.” These terms reinforce the idea that medical intervention is necessary to “affirm” the patient’s self-conception, which need not be grounded in any physical truth.

This practice is a linguistic sleight-of-hand that is antithetical to honest scientific inquiry and, therefore, the actual interests of the patient. Instead, it uses ideological shibboleths to enforce a particular course of medical intervention.

Apparently, not everyone got the HHS memo. 

A new article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) argues that clinicians should use “affirming language” when treating patients experiencing gender distress, and that failing to do so can literally endanger their lives. These efforts include promoting “the use of pronoun-inclusive name tags, gender-neutral bathrooms, and ‘all are welcome’ signage”

“Affirming language is something all clinicians can use to honor patients’ experiences and protect their dignity,” the authors argue. “Every clinician can express empathy. No executive order can prevent a clinician from ensuring transgender patients seeking care feel heard and understood. Now more than ever, silence may be construed as support for antitransgender policies, stoking the fear patients are already experiencing.”

As it pertains to children, this is exactly backwards. 

Obscuring the actual nature of a child’s condition and using terms that implicitly assume medicalization and transition are the only acceptable courses of action is not “empathy” and does not “honor” patients’ experience.

Instead, using these terms constitutes a dereliction of duty and is incompatible with the foundational principles of medical ethics.

So-called “gender-affirming care” for minors is not supported by the weight of existing evidence. The Cass Review, an exhaustive review of gender medical services in the United Kingdom, found “remarkably weak evidence” to support the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments for gender-distressed children. Reviews conducted in Finland and Sweden reached the same conclusion.

Additionally, many of the most frequently cited studies supporting so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors are rife with methodological limitations. Countries including the United Kingdom, Sweden, Brazil and Finland have each restricted minors’ access to these procedures.

Thus, using this coerced language that effectively begins the social transition and medicalization process is tacit encouragement of these dangerous and experimental procedures. 

The approach recommended by the authors of the JAMA commentary is reckless activism masquerading as empathy and inclusion.

Also, notice the phrasing: “silence may be construed as support for antitransgender policies.” Reminiscent of the “silence equals violence” refrain, the authors are effectively arguing that failure to affirmatively use “affirming language” is bigoted and even dangerous.

This seems like a statement from individuals more concerned with a political agenda than an honest and thorough examination of the evidence.

“Gender-affirming communication can preserve the sacredness of patient-clinician relationships and, although it does not replace the need for advocacy, this quiet intervention may save lives,” the authors continue, reinforcing this point.

In addition to these troubling statements, the authors of the JAMA commentary make several claims that reveal an agenda less concerned with scientific evidence and more concerned with ideology.

These include claims that there is “scientific evidence to the contrary” that there are two unchangeable biological sexes. Curiously, this claim is not supported by a citation pointing to the “scientific evidence” that would dispute this fact.

Moreover, the JAMA commentary makes the claim that the “empathy and validation of just one accepting health care professional can cut the risk of transgender youth suicide by more than 30%,” citing a 2023 study.

The method the cited study used to collect this information, however, was an anonymous online survey that did not collect identifying information, and participants were recruited through Facebook and Instagram ads “targeting those who interacted with LGBTQ-related content.” Additionally, “[y]outh who completed the survey were eligible to be entered into a drawing for a $50 gift card by providing their email addresses after being routed to a separate survey.” 

It’s plainly obvious that this recruitment method introduces significant selection bias, undermining the study’s validity.

Medicine should be grounded in scientific evidence, not ideology, and physicians should communicate with their patients in order to best meet their medical needs.

“Gender-affirming” language is hostile to this goal.

Ohio State Med School Closes DEI Office

The Ohio State University College of Medicine will be shuttering its DEI office on May 31, administrators announced in a statement last week.

The decision comes in response to a sweeping new law that effectively bans DEI in higher education, including medical schools.

“We will sunset the College of Medicine Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) effective May 31,” the statement reads. “We will follow our usual practice of working with the impacted individuals to find other opportunities at Ohio State where possible. We remain committed to providing the resources our faculty, staff and learners need to be successful in alignment with our values and adhering to legal requirements.”

The statement was sent by John J. Werner, CEO of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Carol Bradford, Dean of The Ohio State University College of Medicine, and Sarah Sherer, Senior Associate Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer of the Wexner Medical Center.

Additionally, the medical school will “sunset the Vice Chair for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) roles within the [medical school], effective June 27.”

These actions are welcome news: in 2024, Do No Harm filed a civil rights complaint against the medical school for running a scholarship program that was limited to the “following racial or ethnic groups: Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.”

And in 2023, Do No Harm released a report highlighting Ohio State’s numerous DEI initiatives and policies. This included evidence that the medical school’s curriculum is heavily geared toward indoctrinating students into DEI.

“We remain committed to ensuring that every member of our community is valued, heard and can thrive,” the statement concluded. “Our priority is to provide the resources our faculty, staff and learners need to be successful. How we go about that will need to change, but our commitment will not. We will continue to celebrate diverse backgrounds and ideas, and uphold academic freedom, which defines the excellence of American universities.”

Do No Harm Submits Public Comment Urging Reform of Health Agency Bureaucracy

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On Friday, Do No Harm submitted a public comment to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) stressing the importance of having an “accountable and responsive federal workforce” to carry out President Trump’s executive orders targeting DEI, racial discrimination, and gender ideology in the federal government.

Do No Harm submitted the comment in reference to a proposed rule, “Improving Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness in the Civil Service,” that seeks to increase accountability within the federal bureaucracy. 

Specifically, the rule permits agencies to “quickly remove employees from critical positions who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or undermine the democratic process by intentionally subverting Presidential directives.”

Earlier this year, President Trump issued several executive orders that, among other things, cut off taxpayer funding for child sex change interventions, prevent the distribution of federal funds on the basis of race, and prohibit racial discrimination in hiring and recruiting.

Do No Harm’s comment explains how accountability and oversight of the federal bureaucracy’s efforts to carry out these orders is essential for the orders to have their intended effect.

“Do No Harm fears that its efforts to eliminate DEI, youth transgender treatments, and other identity-based practices will suffer if the executive orders—which accomplish exactly that—are not carried out by the appropriate federal officials, including civil servants,” the comment states. 

“For example, if the orders are not enforced and federal grant recipients are free to use taxpayer money to implement race-conscious policies under the guise of ‘DEI,’ Do No Harm’s members will continue to face discrimination in their applications for employment and educational opportunities,” the comment continues.

Additionally, the comment points out that during President Trump’s first term, federal bureaucrats resisted and undermined his agenda.

“By the end of the administration, many political appointees reported that some career staff used several tactics to impede, delay, and block administration policies they didn’t like,” the comment states. “Those tactics included ideologically motivated refusal of work assignments, leaking sensitive information, withholding information from political appointees, misrepresenting facts, delays and slow-walking, unacceptable work product, insubordination, and hiring ideologues into career positions.”

A rule enhancing accountability of the federal bureaucracy is essential to ensure that executive orders targeting DEI and gender ideology are faithfully carried out.

For these reasons, Do No Harm supports the proposed rule.

Mental Health Agency Runs Discriminatory Scholarship Program

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For over 50 years, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has operated the Minority Fellowship Program (MFP), an initiative that “aims to reduce health disparities and improve behavioral health care outcomes for racial and ethnic populations.”

To accomplish this, SAMHSA awards grants to eight grantee organizations who in turn administer the program through individualized curricula, typically involving awarding grants and providing opportunities to graduate students and residents in the field of mental health.

For instance, the grantee organization American Psychological Association provides “financial assistance,” “expert training,” “dedicated mentoring” and “networking opportunities” to the lucky students selected.

However, the program appears to have in mind members of certain racial groups as its desired applicants.

According to a fact sheet on the program, “African American, Alaskan Native, American Indian, Asian American, Hispanic/Latino, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander students are especially encouraged to apply.”

And according to a report by the American Psychiatric Association, one of the “grantee” organizations that works with SAMHSA to operate the MFP, just one of the 29 members of the 2024 cohort for the Resident Fellowship Program, an initiative administered through the MFP, was white.

The Council on Social Work Education, another grantee organization, states that the “MFP targets but is not limited to racial/ethnic minority individuals pursuing a doctoral degree in social work.”

But racial discrimination need not be explicitly exclusionary; prioritizing the recruitment of members of certain racial groups for valuable opportunities like the MFP is still discrimination.

In 2025, there is no tenable justification for such racially-targeted initiatives. 

This program should be welcoming to all, and taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize racial discrimination.

House Passes Budget Bill Cutting Off Medicaid Funding for Child Sex Changes

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This morning, the House of Representatives passed The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a sweeping spending bill that included a provision restricting Medicaid funding for sex change interventions.

Do No Harm worked with Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) on developing a provision to be added to the spending bill that would prevent Medicaid, CHIP, and Affordable Care Act funds from being used for child sex-change interventions. This provision echoes Rep. Crenshaw’s Do No Harm in Medicaid Act.

“We applaud Representative Crenshaw and the House for their efforts to protect children from unscientific sex-change procedures,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Medical Director at Do No Harm. “Americans overwhelmingly oppose these harmful procedures for children and the American taxpayer should not be forced to pay for them.”

The provision amends Section 1903(i) of the Social Security Act, cutting off federal funding for “medically unnecessary procedures” that include child sex change interventions.

Do No Harm provided the Congressional Budget Office with crucial information that enabled it to estimate the cost of these procedures, thereby helping the provision make its way into the spending bill.

The existing evidence does not support the use of sex change interventions to treat gender-distressed children. 

For instance, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a report finding that the “gender-affirming” approach to care of gender-distressed children “lacked sufficient scientific and ethical justification.”

The Cass Review, an exhaustive review of gender medical services in the United Kingdom, found “remarkably weak evidence” to support the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments for gender-distressed children.

Additionally, many of the most frequently-cited studies supporting so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors are rife with methodological errors. Countries including the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Finland have each restricted minors’ access to these procedures.

Do No Harm Statement on Murder of Israeli Embassy Staffers in Washington, D.C.

RICHMOND, VA: May 22, 2025 – Today, following the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers last night in Washington, D.C., Do No Harm released the following statement: 

Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman of Do No Harm:

“Racial discrimination sows division and poisons Americans against one another. It has infiltrated our society and institutions at every level. When allowed to fester, this cancer metastasizes from concerning unequal treatment of our fellow man to tragic violence like we saw at the Capital Jewish Museum last night. Our hearts go out to the families of the two Israeli Embassy staffers who were murdered in this antisemitic attack. May their memory be a blessing.”  

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. With 17,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries, DNH has achieved over 10,000 media hits in top-tier publications and garnered widespread attention through numerous broadcast news appearances. 

Do No Harm Medical Director Kurt Miceli, MD, Testifies Before Congress

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Today, Do No Harm Medical Director Kurt Miceli, MD, testified before the House Subcommittee on Education and Workforce Development at a hearing titled “Restoring Excellence: The Case Against DEI.”

In his opening remarks, Dr. Miceli explained how DEI has come to infect medical education and the medical field as a whole, pointing to the main institutional culprits behind the rise of DEI ideology: medical associations, medical schools, accreditors, and certifying bodies.

Next, in an exchange with Representative Burgess Owens (R-UT), Dr. Miceli debunked the oft-repeated notion that racial concordance – in which patients are treated by physicians of the same race – improves health outcomes.

“We look at this question of racial concordance – the idea that black patients do better with black doctors or white patients do better with white doctors – one of the things we understand is that four out of five systematic reviews that have looked at that question find there is no difference in outcome by racial concordance,” Dr. Miceli said.

Dr. Miceli continued by examining the role of medical education accreditors in propagating DEI, while also noting some good news: the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) recently announced that it would be suspending enforcement of two key “diversity” requirements, following an executive order by President Trump targeting accreditors for injecting DEI into medical education.

“It’s essential that the standards are based on merit, and only merit, so that we make sure we have exceptional physicians that are out there, and nothing else,” he said.

Click here to watch the full hearing.

Click here to read Dr. Miceli’s full testimony.

FTC Takes Aim at Child Transgender Industry’s ‘Deceptive’ Practices

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plans to hold a workshop to review statements made by doctors and medical providers surrounding the efficacy of child sex change interventions, according to documents obtained by The Daily Wire.

The workshop, titled “The Big Lie: The Dangers of Gender-Affirming Care for Minors,” is intended to build on President Trump’s January executive order targeting these procedures, according to The Daily Wire. 

“Every available and legal means to protect children from harmful transgender procedures should be taken,” said Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman of Do No Harm. “The FTC is right to recognize that medical institutions captured by gender ideology are deceiving concerned parents into allowing their children to undergo these dangerous interventions. We applaud the FTC and the Trump Administration for taking this important step towards protecting children.”

Additionally, the workshop’s proposed guest list features several experts including Do No Harm Senior Fellow Dr. Miriam Grossman.

“Under the Federal Trade Commission Act, the FTC is provided broad authority to protect consumers from unfair and deceptive trade acts and practices,” a memo on the workshop reads, according to The Daily Wire. “There is now considerable reason to believe that the doctors and medical providers pushing [gender-affirming care] on minors are knowingly deceiving parents by exaggerating [gender-affirming care’s] ‘benefits’ and downplaying its harmful side effects.”

While it’s unclear exactly which entities the FTC is targeting, medical associations and doctors routinely make misleading statements and downplay the harms of sex change interventions for children.

For instance, the FTC’s actions follow on the heels of a letter by several state attorneys general warning the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) that its statements supporting gender medical interventions for children are “deceptive” and may violate states’ consumer protection laws. That letter specifically targeted the AAP’s statements that characterized puberty blockers as “reversible.”

Puberty blockers can cause diminished bone density in minors, with research showing that they negatively affect “bone mineral density, especially at the lumbar spine, which is only partially restored after sex steroid administration.” 

Moreover, artificially preventing a child from going through puberty is inherently experimental, and there are long-term risks such as cognitive impairment, greater risk of infertility, and permanently impaired adult sexual function.

Additionally, nearly all children put on puberty blockers go on to take cross-sex hormones. And the risks are even more pronounced for cross-sex hormones; women taking testosterone see a 3.5 increase in incidence of heart attacks compared to women not taking testosterone, while men taking estrogen see a 46-fold increase in invasive breast cancer compared to men not taking estrogen.

The memo goes on to note that, “[w]hile several politicized medical organizations that promote [gender-affirming care] for minors as the best standard of medical care might claim a ‘consensus,’ there is in truth no widespread medical consensus as to whether [gender-affirming care] is the correct course of action for gender dysphoric youth.”

This statement gestures at the paucity of evidence supporting child sex change interventions. Several major reviews of the evidence, including the United Kingdom’s Cass Review and a recent report by the Department of Health and Human Services, concluded that there is very weak evidence to support the use of sex change interventions to treat minors with gender dysphoria.

Additionally, major tentpole studies cited to support so-called “gender-affirming care” are often rife with methodological errors.

Do No Harm Supports the EDUCATE Act Introduced by Rep. Greg Murphy and Sen. John Kennedy

RICHMOND, VA; May 20, 2025 – Today, Do No Harm announced support for the EDUCATE Act introduced by Congressman Greg Murphy (R-NC) and Senator John Kennedy (R-LA). If passed, the bill would cut off federal funding to medical schools’ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

The EDUCATE Act would defund programs that compel students or faculty to racially discriminate. It would also block funding to medical schools that have DEI departments or functionally equivalent offices. The bill would require accreditation agencies to remove DEI requirements while allowing instruction about race-related health issues.

“Do No Harm applauds Congressman Murphy and Senator Kennedy for their relentless work to end harmful DEI practices and to restore integrity to American medical schools,” said Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman at Do No Harm. “For too long, accrediting bodies and medical colleges have prioritized identity politics over merit and expertise – putting patients’ health at serious risk. President Trump’s Administration has taken critical steps to dismantle these political activists’ grip on medical education, even causing some accreditors and schools to suspend their discriminatory practices. But the EDUCATE Act could enshrine the President’s actions into law, thereby eradicating DEI programs from medical education permanently.”

“American medical schools are the best in the world and should remain free from discrimination, politicization and acceptance of anything other than excellence,” said Congressman Greg Murphy, MD. “The EDUCATE Act bans race-based mandates at medical schools, protects the First Amendment and civil rights of students, and promotes objective, science-based medicine. Excluding individuals based on appearance or beliefs in the name of diversity is wrong and debases the integrity of the profession. Doctors must be taught to treat patients with the highest quality of care regardless of who they are.  This includes dealing with other medical professionals who may not look like they do. I have dedicated my life to serving others as a physician and will not stand for discrimination in our nation’s institutions of medicine.”

“Medical schools should be in the business of training our future doctors to save lives—not indoctrinating students on anti-American DEI ideology. The EDUCATE Act would make sure the government isn’t wasting your money on woke struggle sessions and blatant discrimination in medical schools,” said Senator John Kennedy.

Click here to read the text of the EDUCATE 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. With 17,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries, DNH has achieved over 10,000 media hits in top-tier publications and garnered widespread attention through numerous broadcast news appearances.

The AAMC Should Not Sacrifice Merit for Ideology

In 2020, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) unveiled a new test, the PREview exam, aimed at measuring skills and competencies related to professionalism for students applying to medical schools. As of the 2024-2025 application cycle, nine medical schools had made submission of PREview scores mandatory. 

The AAMC’s justification for the exam is that medical schools should consider factors other than an applicant’s academic achievement (e.g. MCAT scores and GPA) when making admissions decisions, echoing the “holistic” review practice that the AAMC has promoted.

“The PREview exam provides medical schools with a more complete view of each applicant by assessing skills such as resilience and adaptability, service orientation, ethical responsibility to self and others, empathy and compassion, cultural awareness, cultural humility, and teamwork and collaboration, among others,” the AAMC states.

In a vacuum, the idea that these skills are relevant to the practice of medicine isn’t particularly uncontroversial.

But a cursory understanding of the AAMC’s institutional position on medical school admissions should provoke considerable skepticism as to the purpose of the PREview exam.

The AAMC has long been a staunch advocate for DEI and race-conscious admissions, urging the Supreme Court to uphold affirmative action in 2023. Do No Harm’s landmark 2024 report further exposed how the AAMC has injected DEI into nearly every facet of medical education. 

Indeed, as the AAMC itself admits, one of the purposes of the PREview exam is to promote “inclusivity”; the exam was even assessed by “experts” in DEI.

“In discussing the exam with our DEI constituents, the sentiment has always been that it would help level the playing field for applicants,” said David Acosta, MD, AAMC chief diversity and inclusion officer, in a 2022 statement.

It’s hard to think of what “level the playing field” could mean or entail except the devaluing of traditional metrics of merit. Indicators of academic achievement and competency such as GPA and MCAT scores already do level the playing field.

These ideological positions are hinted at in public materials concerning the PREview exam.

For instance, one question included in a practice version of the exam presents a scenario in which a male student exhibits sexist behavior.

You and a group of medical students are shadowing a surgeon as part of a clinical experience. The surgeon mentions that they need a volunteer to assist with an operation. You overhear a male student ask the female students if he can volunteer because he believes most women are not interested in surgery anyway. After the clinical experience, one of your classmates complains to you about the male student’s comment.

Another question implicitly extols the virtues of diversity, with a scenario reinforcing the notion that medical schools are not sufficiently considering different racial groups.

You are taking a course that requires you to conduct interviews with actors portraying patients. Several weeks into your course, you realize that every patient you have interviewed is White. When you suggest to the course instructor that the actors lack diversity, your course instructor responds that the patients have been successful for years and there is no need to make changes.

It’s apparent that the PREview exam is just another way for the AAMC to devalue traditional metrics of merit and competence in favor of admissions methods that allow medical schools to pursue the DEI agenda.

Out of reckless ideological zeal, the AAMC continues to champion factors less relevant to the actual practice of medicine.

Clinical practice is not a game, and decisions as to who medical schools admit should not be taken lightly.

The AAMC should take its position more seriously, and abandon its ideological commitment to DEI; the future of medical education very much depends on it.