Months after a complaint by Do No Harm’s chief medical officer, a woke continuing medical education (CME) course previously certified for credit no longer holds that designation — at least for physicians. Yet the course is still widely available, albeit in altered form, and continues to substitute progressive ideology for useful healthcare instruction.
HealthStream’s “Implicit Bias for Clinicians” course “present[s] strategies and interventions … to reduce bias and improve culturally competent care across individual, organizational, and broad-scale settings.”
Its ideological buttress is the notion that “[i]mplicit bias impacts healthcare in many ways” and that “how healthcare professionals perceive, diagnose, and treat patients … causes significant healthcare disparities in access, quality, and outcomes.”
Until recently, the course was accredited by both the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). Now, however, only the course’s ANCC accreditation remains.
Do No Harm might reasonably take some credit for that development.
On February 1, 2026, Do No Harm’s Dr. Kurt Miceli filed a complaint with the ACCME, pointing out the course’s violation of “several key standards” set forth by the organization.
Specifically, Dr. Miceli wrote, the course “is highly ideological and politically charged with few, if any, references to the science.”
Moreover, it “fails to provide a fair and balanced perspective … introduces bias, makes unsubstantiated claims, and promotes ideological advocacy that undermines the objectivity of medical education.”
A look at the “Implicit Bias for Clinicians” training then offered supports Dr. Miceli’s assertions.
Contending that “implicit bias is a public health problem,” the course instructed learners on “white privilege,” an “inherent set of advantages, benefits, and entitlements … bestowed on people due to the presentation of the color of their skin.”
It warned against “white supremacy” and stated baldly that “[w]hite people dominate society in the U.S. to the detriment of other racial and ethnic groups.”
It urged practitioners to “recognize and acknowledge that every person holds implicit biases, including yourself.”
Happily, this ideological and unscientific material has been largely eliminated from HealthStream’s course. To the extent that the February complaint spurred a revision, we will take the win.
However, the material that remains, while considerably less provocative, is nevertheless unsound.
For example, and as its name makes clear, the course continues to be built upon the cracked foundation of “implicit bias,” a debunked, pseudoscientific construct that posits “unconscious” racism where no visible prejudice exists.
It appeals to the flawed Implicit Association Test (IAT), a vehicle designed to demonstrate users’ unconscious racism by measuring how quickly they match, e.g., black or white faces to positive or negative words.
The nurses who avail themselves of this continuing-education opportunity will not find that their skills or knowledge have been improved.
Rather, they will have wasted their time on ideologically driven content designed to signal the “virtue” of its creators and to introduce progressive orthodoxies into healthcare practice.
The fact that HealthStream’s course has been stripped of its worst elements is a very good thing. Nevertheless, the fact that it still exists at all is an ongoing problem.
Do No Harm Files OMB Comment on Federal Funding of Chemical and Surgical Mutilation of Children
COMMENTARY Gender Ideology Federal government Commentary Executive Do No Harm StaffTwo days ago, Do No Harm answered the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) request for comment on a proposed rule to ensure that federal funding does not support the chemical and surgical mutilation of children under 19 years of age.
Specifically, OMB proposes requiring federal agencies or pass-through entities to verify that government funds are not supporting “the so-called ‘transition’” of minors.
Do No Harm fully supports this effort.
To begin with, scientific evidence does not validate the procedures in question, which can include the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and invasive surgeries that attempt to physically reject a child’s biological sex.
Furthermore, and consequently, funding these procedures contradicts the government’s commitment to support science-based medicine. Sex-rejecting procedures for minors are ideological, not scientific.
Finally, by directing agencies and recipients — unless expressly required by law — not to use federal awards to support “disparate-impact” studies, litigation, or related activities, the proposed rule reasonably seeks to prevent federal funding from creating race-conscious incentives in medicine. Do No Harm strongly supports this prohibition.
Please read the full comment here or below.
Do No Harm Report Exposes Rise in Woke and Weak Research by Medical Students
COMMENTARY DEI Medical Journal, Medical School Press Release Do No Harm StaffSalt Lake City, UT: July 14, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm released a report that exposes how low-quality medical student–authored research has increased over the last two decades, corresponding with medical schools’ elimination of letter grades. The report concludes that the increased volume of studies authored or co-authored by students is driven by their desire to pad their résumés in the absence of other academic distinctions. Moreover, the student research in question is disproportionately focused on politicized topics.
The report, titled “Why Johnny Can’t Stop Writing: The Boom in Low-Impact, Politicized Medical-Student Research,” conducts an advanced search through the medical-journal database PubMed to identify publications authored by medical students and, separately, those that use politicized terms such as “equity,” “justice,” “racism,” and “diversity.”
“Without the use of the letter-grade system, students are searching for other ways to stand out for fellowships and residency programs, which has inevitably led to an arms race in publications authored by medical students,” said Jay Greene, PhD, Director of Research at Do No Harm. “To compound the problem, quantity is incentivized over quality — leading to shoddy research and focus on politicized topics. Our report reveals the many factors responsible for the degradation of the research enterprise and offers proposed solutions to correct course. By returning to objective letter grading, schools would incentivize students to focus on mastering their skill set in the clinical space rather than fluffing their résumés with baseless research endeavors.”
Click here to read the full report.
The report also conducts a thorough analysis of two competing studies. The first, by Hausner et al., concludes that medical research grew in both volume and quality between 2003 and 2023. The second, by Elliott et al., finds that the rise in student-authored articles led to a notable decline in quality. Do No Harm’s analysis concludes that the Hausner study excluded 72 percent of medical-student publications in its analysis, distorting its findings, In addition, the primary metric used in the Hausner study, Relative Citation Ratio (RCR), is an unreliable indicator of article quality.
The report cites several examples of low-quality and politicized research, calls for medical students to redirect their time and energy toward excelling in coursework and acquiring the knowledge needed to be excellent physicians, and furthers Do No Harm’s larger mission to depoliticize medical research and recenter medical education on rigor and skill.
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 26 countries.
Do No Harm Files FDA Comment on ‘Sex’ Versus ‘Gender’
COMMENTARY Gender Ideology Federal government Commentary Executive Do No Harm StaffLast week, Do No Harm submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration a comment in support of a proposed rule replacing “gender” with “sex” — or removing “gender” altogether — throughout Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations.
The proposed change follows the directive of Executive Order 14168, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” issued on January 20, 2025.
It also aligns with scientific evidence.
Per the executive order: “[E]very agency … shall use the term ‘sex’ and not ‘gender’ in all applicable Federal policies and documents.”
This is important because sex (not “gender”) is a primary variable that affects pharmacokinetics — i.e., the movement of drugs through the body. Clinical studies, prescription labeling, and adverse-event reporting can all be compromised when differences between the two sexes — men and women — are improperly indicated or not taken into account.
At stake here is women’s health. The safety and efficacy of medical treatments should not be sacrificed in furtherance of gender ideologies.
Please read the full comment here or below.
SUNY Medical Schools Have Embraced DEI. Blame SUNY.
COMMENTARY New York DEI State University of New York, SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University College of Medicine, SUNY Upstate Medical University Norton College of Medicine Medical School, Public university, University System Commentary Do No Harm StaffIncluded among the State University of New York’s (SUNY) constituent institutions are four medical schools. All four express a commitment to wokeness in the form of DEI.
At best, these gestures are vogue frivolities — concessions to an activist class that demands ideological tribute from public institutions.
At worst, they are actively harmful, leading to discrimination in favor of some people and against others in an attempt to address different outcomes among racial groups.
Yet attempts by reformers to address this behavior at SUNY’s medical schools will necessarily be an uphill battle. The reason? SUNY itself has been captured by ideological forces intent on the widespread introduction and defense of DEI.
The evidence is unignorable:
Nor are things better at many of SUNY’s individual campuses:
This is one of the ways in which activists perpetuate DEI ideology. By gaining a foothold both at the senior administrative level of SUNY and in the individual SUNY campuses, bad actors make it next to impossible for dissenting administrators and campuses to resist (assuming any such individuals or institutions exist).
In other words, a SUNY medical school that wished to dispense with unscientific DEI frippery would be swimming upstream. All the momentum is going in the other direction.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean that reformers’ task is hopeless. But it does mean that we have a long road ahead of us.
North Carolina’s New Medical School Is Already Woke
COMMENTARY North Carolina DEI Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffMethodist University’s new Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine has recruited its inaugural class of students and will begin instruction later this month. Unfortunately, the budding institution appears to have laid a foundation of DEI.
Located in Fayetteville in south-central North Carolina, Methodist’s new School of Medicine was created in part to address a physician shortage east of the state-bisecting Interstate 95. As such, one might expect (and indeed one finds) an emphasis on the healthcare needs of a particular set of people in the institution’s materials.
Methodist SOM’s job page, for example, cites its “clear mission to prepare graduates who are … community-engaged.”
The institution’s “Mission, Vision & Values” page specifically notes that, “[i]n non-metropolitan counties in North Carolina, growth in physicians-per-capita has been slow” and that “[t]he University’s … medical school will be perfectly positioned to address this deficiency.”
The new school intends to prepare graduates “who will contribute to … improving health outcomes … wherever they may practice.” Nevertheless, “southeastern North Carolina” receives a particular nod.
None of this is undesirable. Regional physician shortages are real, and a medical school created to address that gap has every right to hold to a community-focused mission.
The problem occurs when an appropriate regional focus gives way to inappropriate DEI ideology.
That is already happening at Methodist SOM. The previously cited job page, for instance, mentions not only “community-engaged” graduates but graduates who are “focused on equity.”
The page boasts of Methodist SOM’s “Diversity & Inclusion Initiatives,” noting its “targeted recruitment and retention efforts aimed at ensuring a diverse faculty and student body.”
Over on the “Mission, Vision & Values” page, site visitors learn that graduates should be “equity-focused physician leaders who will contribute to mitigating health disparities.”
Because the institution intends to “educate a diverse population,” it lists among its “Values” a desire for “Inclusive Belonging.”
One might reasonably ask what any of this has to do with medical science. Indeed, like most of the doctrines of the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” movement, this thinking has at its core the assumption that “systemic” forces have created racist outcomes that only social engineering can address.
If that proposition is true, then DEI advocates should produce the evidence. That they are unable to do so reveals much about the ideological (rather than scientific) nature of their claims.
Nevertheless, Methodist’s new medical school appears to be constructing a DEI apparatus that may already be affecting hiring and admissions. Regarding the latter, consider the words of Hershey Bell, MD, the institution’s dean: “What stood out” as Methodist SOM measured applicants “was not just academic excellence, but alignment with our mission.”
It may well be the case that south-central and southeastern North Carolina need a medical school. But they don’t need a woke one.
A Victory for Science and Fairness in Women’s Sports
COMMENTARY Idaho, West Virginia Gender Ideology State government Commentary Judicial Do No Harm StaffOn June 30, the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox that neither Title IX nor the Equal Protection Clause prevent states from providing separate men’s and women’s sports teams on the basis of biological sex. Notably, since approximately 2020, 27 states have enacted legislation to maintain female sports for biological females. The judgment is a victory for common sense.
The consolidated cases were brought by male athletes who wished to compete on female sports teams on the basis of their transgender identification. At issue was whether state laws in West Virginia and Idaho that prevent such an outcome discriminate on the basis of sex in violation of federal civil-rights laws and the Constitution.
In a unanimous 9–0 ruling, the Court declared that the states’ laws enacting sex-separated athletics are indeed consistent with, and do not violate, Title IX. Delivering the opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh confirmed that “Title IX’s implementing regulations expressly permit schools to maintain separate teams for ‘members of each sex’” and that “the term ‘sex’ in Title IX cannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex.”
Moreover, on the constitutional question, the Court held 6–3 that sex-based classifications advancing safety and competitive fairness for biological women and girls are constitutionally sufficient interests such that states “d[o] not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by maintaining female sports teams for biological females.”
This ruling comports with amicus briefs filed by Do No Harm. In our briefs in support of West Virginia and Idaho governor Bradley Little (R), we argued that sex and gender identity are fundamentally distinct and that altering the latter has no bearing on the former. (“Scientific facts do not change with the shifting winds of cultural ideology: An individual’s gender identity does not alter his or her sex.”)
We argued further that the lower court decisions in these cases “reflexively assumed that using puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat gender dysphoria is beyond debate” and had effectively “eviscerat[ed] the entire idea of boys’ and girls’ sports teams.”
As Justice Thomas echoed in his concurring opinion: “Men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or girls, even if they believe that they are. Sex is an immutable ‘biological’ characteristic; it is binary; and ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ ‘boy’ and ‘girl,’ are the terms that correspond to adults and children of each sex.”
Likewise, the Court specifically noted that even if the premise advanced by the transgender athletes were true — “that at least some biological males who identify as female and take puberty blockers or hormones do not retain physical advantages over biological females” — states would nevertheless be constitutionally justified in maintaining sex-separated sports teams on the basis of the important interests in advancing safety and competitive fairness for the female sex.
Importantly, the Court also noted that the issue of whether or to what extent differences are retained following the administration of puberty blockers or hormones is not a decided question and “is the subject of ongoing medical and scientific debate.” Courts should not take it for granted.
Do No Harm welcomes the Court’s straightforward reasoning and ruling. Yet we also look forward to the inevitable next question, helpfully previewed by a footnote in Justice Kavanaugh’s opinion:
The Court is, of course, correct. Having now confirmed that Title IX and the Constitution permit states to protect women’s sports from unfair and unsafe incursions by male athletes, courts will have to decide next whether states must do so.
America’s Medical Schools Tiptoe Away from DEI — For Now
IN THE NEWS DEI accrediting organization Op-Ed Stanley Goldfarb, MDRead more at the New York Post.
Another DEI Office Name Change at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson
COMMENTARY Arizona DEI University of Arizona College of Medicine Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffIn 2024, the Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson (UACOM-T) was rebranded the Office of Access, Community & Belonging.
Since then, the administrative unit has been renamed the Office of Community Engagement & Partnerships.
We look forward to whatever it may be called next.
There is reason for our suspicion that UACOM-T is merely abandoning politically troublesome terminology. To begin with, and as Do No Harm has previously noted, the DEI office’s first name change was largely cosmetic.
While UACOM-T scrubbed several DEI resources from its website during the unit’s first evolution, the pages of the DEI office and the Access, Community & Belonging office contained numerous similarities.
Importantly, both offices were run by the same administrative official, Celina Valenzuela, MD.
Dr. Valenzuela remains the head of the new Office of Community Engagement & Partnerships and retains her title of “vice dean.” In a greeting posted on the office’s first two homepages, she professed that “Inclusive Excellence is fundamental to the advancement of science” and pledged support for “the active recruitment, training, and retention of a medical and research workforce that reflects the demographics of Arizona.”
These DEI-informed attitudes remain despite the office’s second name change. Indeed, they are all over the Office of Community Engagement & Partnership’s online home.
Among the first examples one notices is the new office’s “Land Acknowledgement,” unchanged since its days as the Office of Access, Community & Belonging.
The new office still offers a “Pathways to Success” program for high schoolers, composed, in part, of an event series in which “speakers highlight the importance of … representation and diversity in health care.”
The new office continues to brag that Pathways to Success “[p]rovides students from under-resourced backgrounds with a unique opportunity to explore careers in medicine,” “[e]ncourages [d]iversity in [m]edicine,” and “promote[s] long-term inclusivity.”
Tellingly, the Pathways to Success program is “particularly” for high-school juniors and seniors “[f]rom historically under-resourced communities,” a term of art that makes clear the office’s preference for applicants of certain races and ethnicities.
In its outreach to current medical students, the renamed Office of Community Engagement & Partnerships is similarly committed to the principles of DEI.
Among its sponsored organizations is a Student Council on Community Engagement, which “[p]romote[s] community-responsive care in the curriculum” and “[s]upport[s] [the] recruitment and retention of mission-aligned faculty/staff.”
“Community-responsive care,” while seemingly harmless, brings to mind the activist obsession with “social determinants of health” and the prioritization of “systemic” rather than behavioral threats to patient well-being. “Mission-aligned” thinking in hiring and admissions, meanwhile, is, in many cases, a workaround for decisionmaking based on race.
Also, why is a student-led group so intimately involved with curricular design and faculty recruitment practices? Wouldn’t those be the domain of the institution’s academic leadership and faculty — those entrusted with maintaining professional standards and stewarding the long‑term integrity of the program?
Perhaps most troublingly, through the new Office of Community Engagement & Partnerships, student groups may apply for funding for “student-led workshops or trainings on … advocacy [or] health equity.” While there is obviously nothing wrong with students forming campus groups, should a taxpayer-funded public medical school help pay for advocacy training?
This is the same DEI music sung to the same DEI tune. Only the name of the song has changed.
Yes, UACOM-T has once again renamed its diversity office. But the work goes on.
Yale’s School of Public Health Is Training Activists, Not Experts
COMMENTARY Connecticut DEI Yale University Private university Commentary Do No Harm StaffEarlier this month, we lamented the UC Berkeley School of Public Health’s reliance on woke buzzwords and abstractions. A glance at the Yale School of Public Health’s “U.S. Health Justice Concentration” reveals that the problem goes from coast to coast.
Yale SPH introduces its program of study with a number of evidence-free claims:
“Vast, persistent and avoidable health inequalities by race, geography, class, gender identity and sexual orientation are well documented.”
“[S]ystems and processes … perpetuate health injustice in the United States.”
“[P]ast and present systems of privilege and power, related to race, class, gender, sexual orientation and other identities, create unequal burdens on health that are avoidable and unjust.”
There is a kernel of truth in some of these assertions, especially the contention that past racism (e.g., before and during the Civil Rights Era) previously affected health outcomes.
Yet the broader implication — that today’s health “inequalities” are exclusively or primarily the result of oppressive “systems” — begins by disregarding the role that individual behavior plays in patient health.
To name only the most obvious example, smoking, which dramatically increases one’s risk of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease, is not “systemic”; it is personal.
This medical reality seems to be lost on Yale SPH’s curriculum designers. Students pursuing a U.S. Health Justice Concentration must take “SBS 590 Advocacy and Activism,” a course in which they are taught “the theoretical frameworks and the practical applications of community organizing and advocacy as a means of subverting traditional systems of power.”
Among the academic offerings from which they may choose are “SBS 592 Biomedical Justice: Public Health Critiques and Praxis” and “SBS 593 Community-based Participatory Research in Public Health,” classes in which students “analyze and critique public health methodology, discourse, and practice from a health justice framework” and consider “an effective strategy to understanding and addressing health disparities in public health and ultimately achieving health equity,” respectively.
In other words, Yale SPH is interested in producing not public-health experts but professional activists. This is a serious mistake. “Subverting traditional systems of power” may align with ideological goals, but it will do nothing to address the next pandemic.
Things get even worse as one moves down the concentration’s page. Students must take one course that “critically analyzes the roles of history, power and privilege in creating and maintaining health inequities.”
They must take another that “discusses how systems of government and law affect health equity at the local, state, and national level.”
Again, the focus here is on ideological assumptions and agitation. (“EMD 582 Political Epidemiology” is a particularly brazen offender.) Students interested in the fundamentals of public health will need to search outside of this concentration.
Indeed, a look at the U.S. Health Justice Concentration’s student “competencies” list suggests that actual public-health instruction is far from Yale SPH’s mind. Much is made therein of “community organizing,” “power, privilege, and history,” “critical justice,” and “positionality, subjectivity, power and privilege.” Little is made of how diseases spread or how populations adopt healthy behaviors.
As at UC Berkeley, this move away from science and toward political advocacy will please students who see public health as a means to ideological ends. But it may have real health consequences for the rest of us.
Woke Assumptions at the AMA Hinder Doctor-Patient ‘Trust’
COMMENTARY DEI American Medical Association Medical association Commentary Do No Harm StaffWokeness in medicine will have ended when its explicit gestures and its implicit values and assumptions disappear. A high-level speech at the AMA’s 2026 Annual Meeting of the House of Delegates reveals how far we are from that goal.
The address in question, by incoming AMA president Willie Underwood III, MD, was at times inspiring. Recalling a defining childhood encounter, Underwood evoked a scene half a century old in which an aunt set him on the path of achievement.
“Willie,” Underwood remembered his aunt saying, “we need a doctor and a lawyer in the family. Your cousin is going to be the lawyer. What does that make you?”
One would need a heart of stone to be unmoved by this optimism and ambition. Yet that is, in part, why other elements of Underwood’s speech were so disappointing.
Looking behind him toward a row of past AMA presidents, Underwood declared that “[t]hey represent historic firsts for the AMA, across race, orientation and gender.”
“Their leadership,” Underwood continued, “represents … the responsibility of this profession.”
This is discouraging thinking. The men and women whom Underwood named — Nancy Dickey, Robert Wah, Patrice Harris, Jesse Ehrenfeld, and Bobby Mukkamala — are exceptionally accomplished individuals, whatever one thinks of their politics. To note only their “race, orientation and gender,” as Underwood did, is to celebrate identity rather than achievement.
Such an ideology has no place in a field where merit must reign.
Neither, for that matter, do Underwood’s recourses to woke clichés:
“[T]he cracks in our health system are … structural failures affecting lives every single day.”
“[O]utcomes are determined more by ZIP code than diagnosis.”
“These are lived realities that I understand as a physician and as a patient.”
“That is why conversations about health equity matter.”
None of these remarks is likely to compromise patient care. But they nevertheless represent a way of thinking that is political and ideological.
Allowed to become habits of mind, these assumptions compromise the institutional integrity of the AMA and its commitment to the “science of medicine.”
Here, in a nutshell, is why the intrusion of leftist political thought into medicine matters. Physicians ought to treat patients as unique individuals rather than representatives of identity groups, pursue objective scientific truth without deference to political narratives, and defend the profession’s commitment to merit, evidence, and excellence against ideological capture.
Doing otherwise jeopardizes patient confidence in the profession. As outgoing AMA president Bobby Mukkamala rightly noted in his own address, “When trust is weakened, every diagnosis becomes harder, every treatment more difficult, and every patient is put at greater risk.”
This is all the more reason to reject the politicization of medicine and recommit the profession to the pursuit of truth over political narratives.
The relationship between Americans and the medical establishment will fully heal only when physicians with public platforms cease to pepper their speech with woke platitudes and presumptions. That hasn’t yet happened.
Trust your doctor? We’d like to. But we’re going to need some help.
The University of Buffalo Is Teaching Student Dentists DEI
COMMENTARY New York DEI Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffFirst-year dental students at the University of Buffalo must attend a virtual DEI orientation before arriving on campus. But doctor, I just have a toothache!
The university’s School of Dental Medicine (UBSDM) is “committed to exploring, understanding, and responding to systemic inequities that impact oral health outcomes,” according to its online materials.
As such, UBSDM demands that graduates be “competent in managing a diverse patient population” and have the skills necessary to “function successfully in a multicultural work environment.”
These are not outrageous goals. Working dentists will encounter patients of many different ethnicities, and many dental practices will bring together racially diverse teams.
The problem arises when the practical skill of treating others with respect gives way to the ideological project of what UBSDM calls “equity, diversity and inclusion.”
Put the terms in whatever order you like; DEI remains an extraordinarily politicized framework designed to push a leftist agenda into public and private life.
The evidence is all over UBSDM’s “D1 Orientation to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion” page.
As the orientation commences, students “shar[e]” their “pronouns” before “investigat[ing] structural marginalization as a public health problem that impacts all of us.”
They consider “our collective responsibility to build inclusive communities.”
They “construct and recommend policies and practices we can collectively take to strengthen our commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion.”
Imagine for a moment the situation of a student who has entered dental school with the intention of learning the clinical practice of dentistry and who wishes for none of the ideological indoctrination. Is such a student likely to feel supported when noting that discussions of “structural marginalization” and “collective responsibility” properly belong in philosophy or social‑science classrooms rather than in dental education — that these topics bear no substantive connection to the practical work of improving oral health?
Perhaps such a student would indeed be made to feel the sense of “belonging” that DEI types prize. But we doubt it. At the very least, a student with that belief would likely be swimming against the tide of established opinion.
Consider, for example, the “Selections of Students’ Reflections” with which UBSDM staff have seen fit to adorn their page.
In “Silence is complicit,” a short student poem produced during a previous orientation session, the author describes “[s]ilence that is deafening” and asserts that “[c]hange cannot be brought by silence.”
Another student work, “Roots,” borrows elements of traditional poetic meter to praise DEI:
Still another, “An Antiracist Dentist,” begins, “I made a commitment to serve the community / not just by ensuring oral health for all / but by understanding true humanity.”
This is bad poetry. Far more importantly, it is a waste of time for tomorrow’s dentists, all of whom need clear, precise, technical training if our children’s teeth are to be cleaned, their cavities filled, and their enamel strengthened.
Doctor, I have a toothache. Is UBSDM producing dentists who can help me?
Do No Harm Report Addresses the Concerning Rise of ‘Social Determinants of Health’ Ideology in Medical Literature
COMMENTARY DEI Medical Journal Press Release Do No Harm StaffSALT LAKE CITY, UT: June 24, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm released a report that documents the marked increase in the use of “social determinants of health” (SDOH) ideology and language in medical literature over the last decade. The report raises concerns that, as the volume of medical articles mentioning SDOH increases and the factors discussed under its umbrella expand, the term risks introducing harmful ideologies into the practice of healthcare.
The report, titled “The Expanding Scope of Social Determinants of Health,” reviews articles published in the past decade from some of the most prominent medical journals, including the BMJ, the Lancet, JAMA, the New England Journal of Medicine, and Nature Medicine. The analysis finds that the annual number of SDOH-related articles more than tripled over the last 10 years, that references to race or racism as social determinants of health have surged, and that healthcare is increasingly becoming shaped by radical forces outside the clinic itself.
“The expansion of the social determinants of health framework is a serious cause for concern,” said Ian Kingsbury, Sr. Director of Do No Harm’s Center for Accountability in Medicine. “Introducing new areas outside a physician’s scope is a tool to advance a leftist political ideology rather than allowing providers to focus on high-quality patient care. As the concept of SDOH becomes overly inclusive and addresses complex social and economic issues, we increasingly burden physicians with solving problems far outside their clinical expertise. Do No Harm is committed to ensuring the medical field is not influenced by political agendas and remains focused on recruiting and educating excellent healthcare professionals who can deliver top-tier care.”
Click here to read the full report.
The report’s analysis, done by DNH senior fellow Jason Bedrick, captures the heightened focus on race, racism, and discrimination in medicine today, as well as the increasing tendency of medical articles to devote time and attention to a wide range of policy areas that go beyond their medical expertise.
Do No Harm has commented previously on the flaws of SDOH ideology and has asserted that it is not the role of medical professionals to have a comprehensive understanding of ideological issues or to serve as civic reformers. Simply put, doctors are not public-policy experts and should not behave as such in the medical literature.
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.
WPATH Deserves It
COMMENTARY Gender Ideology Professional organization Commentary Executive Do No Harm StaffLast week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a lawsuit against the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). The association richly deserves this comeuppance.
The FTC alleges that WPATH “has provided the means for medical providers to make false and unsubstantiated claims to parents in order to sell pediatric medical transition services.”
In plain English, WPATH’s member clinicians have long profited from so-called gender-affirming care for minors, and the association is now accused of misrepresenting the science behind that “care” to keep the dollars flowing.
To begin with, WPATH has spent recent decades positioning itself as the preeminent authority on gender medicine.
In a March 2023 statement, for example, the association referred to the current eighth edition of its “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People” (SOC-8) as “the foremost evidence-based guideline for the provision of [transgender and gender diverse] healthcare.”
That document, WPATH continued, “is based on the best available science with input from over 100 global medical professionals and experts and represents best-practice guidelines for the provision of gender-affirming healthcare.”
As a result, in part, of this institutional self-aggrandizement, WPATH’s recommendations have been widely adopted by insurers, hospitals, and regulators. Clinicians rely on WPATH’s representations when diagnosing children.
In the U.S. at least, it is not too much to say that pediatric gender medicine is WPATH, and WPATH is pediatric gender medicine.
Were the association an honest broker, we might merely lament its grievous ideological misjudgments. Yet, according to the FTC, WPATH has knowingly made false and unsubstantiated claims about the medical necessity, effectiveness, and safety of sex-denying interventions for minors.
Specifically, the FTC alleges that “[t]he methodology WPATH used to create SOC-8 does not satisfy accepted medical standards of evidence.” In creating its document, WPATH “selected authors who had conflicts of interest” and “made material changes to its recommendations in response to external pressure rather than scientific evidence.”
These are not the allegations of the federal government alone. The New York Times reported only last year that “[i]n fending off attacks on gender-affirming care … WPATH had itself allowed politics to dictate some of its recommendations.”
Moreover, the FTC’s complaint contends, WPATH “misrepresented the quality of evidence underlying its guidelines.” In a 2023 memo to his colleagues, Eli Coleman, MD, chairman of the SOC-8 team, confessed, “[a]ll of us are painfully aware that there are many gaps in [the] research to back up our recommendations.” Nevertheless, those recommendation went forward unamended.
Perhaps most damagingly, WPATH has made unsupportable claims about the juvenile sex-denying interventions from which its member clinicians profited.
According to the FTC, “WPATH represents … that … transition services are medically necessary and effective at preventing suicide in children[;] that puberty blockers are fully reversible[;] that cross-sex hormones improve mental health[;] and that breast amputations are safe, effective, and consistently and directly increase children’s health-related quality of life.”
These claims are false.
As Do No Harm has previously demonstrated, the myth that “sex-change” interventions reduce the risk of suicide is completely unsupported by the evidence.
Experts from the Mayo Clinic have cast doubt on the reversibility of puberty blockers, and the removal of healthy breast tissue through so-called top surgery “creates permanent and disfiguring changes.”
Studies professing to show mental-health improvements for minors who receive cross-sex hormones and other sex-denying interventions are deeply flawed.
Given the known realities of child “gender-affirming care,” it is difficult to see WPATH’s recommendations as anything other than ideologically (or financially) driven.
That’s bad medicine and an abuse of patients’ trust.
The UC Berkeley School of Public Health Should Stay in Its Lane
COMMENTARY California DEI Public university Commentary Do No Harm StaffSomeone throw a life preserver. The UC Berkeley School of Public Health is drowning in woke buzzwords and abstractions.
The problem begins on the school’s landing page. There, site visitors encounter not only such leftist preoccupations as “climate change” and “social inequity” but a misappropriated Martin Luther King, Jr., line manipulated to fit the school’s woke mission.
Despite the fact that the line has become a political cliché in recent years, it is pleasant enough to believe that the “arc of the moral universe … bends toward justice,” as King argued in 1958, borrowing from the 19th-century abolitionist minister Theodore Parker. What is less likely is that it bends toward “health equity,” a concern, like climate change, with which schools of public health signal vogue progressivism rather than scientific seriousness.
A tour through the rest of the school’s website is equally troubling.
The school’s “Purpose,” according to its “Research and Practice” page, is to “conduct research that emphasizes the social determinants of health.”
Yet that theory of medicine, as Do No Harm has previously explained, “confuses social and economic conditions that correlate with poor health outcomes with the actual causes of those outcomes.” To give just one example, poverty may correlate with obesity, but it is obesity itself with which physicians and public-health officials ought to concern themselves, helping patients make lifestyle improvements or, in some cases, choose appropriate pharmacological or surgical interventions.
Elsewhere on the same page, the school improperly conflates a political dilemma with appropriate public-health concerns, implying, for example, that “global access to clean energy” lies within the public-health realm’s reasonable sphere of influence.
It doesn’t. Nor, for that matter, does “help[ing] Asian American men flourish” by giving them “pride in their cultural heritage,” however noble that goal might be.
Things are little better on the curricular side. Among the school’s offerings is a graduate certificate in racism, health, and social justice, the purpose of which is to “provide theoretical, methodological, and applied training at the intersection of public health inequities, racial justice, and social justice.”
Here as elsewhere on the site, the school argues that “social, economic, and political determinants … drive health inequalities and must be confronted to create a more equitable and just society.”
The problem with this line of thinking is that, to the extent these determinants exist, they are the proper remit of voters and our elected representatives, not public-health officials acting under the ostensibly neutral and objective auspices of science. Confusing the two “lanes” will only heighten the public’s distrust of the public-health establishment in the long run.
It is concerning that the UC Berkeley School of Public Health seems unable or unwilling to come to this conclusion.
Americans deserve better: public-health schools that aren’t floundering in the progressive mire.
When Foxes Guard the Admissions Henhouse
COMMENTARY DEI Kaiser Pemanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine Medical School Commentary Do No Harm StaffThe fox shouldn’t guard the henhouse. Athletes ought not to referee their own games. And a DEI official has no place on a medical-school admissions staff.
If only Kaiser Permanente’s Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine (KPSOM) understood that final lesson.
According to the institution’s website, Lindia Willies-Jacobo, MD, currently serves as both senior associate dean for admissions and senior associate dean for inclusive excellence.
That combination should give supporters of merit-based admissions pause.
According to her introduction at a recent event hosted by the National Arab American Medical Association (NAAMA), Dr. Willies-Jacobo’s admissions title is not merely decorative. She actually “oversees the admissions process at KPSOM” (3:19).
Nor are the administrator’s DEI credentials inflated. As the KPSOM website indicates, Dr. Willies-Jacobo was previously assistant dean for diversity and community partnerships and director of the program in medical education-health equity at the UC San Diego School of Medicine for 10 years.
Her stated interests include “healthcare workforce diversity, cultural humility in the practice of medicine, advocacy for underserved populations, and combating health inequities.”
One can easily imagine how these DEI beliefs and admissions-office responsibilities might lead to ethical and legal conflicts in the post–Students for Fair Admissions landscape. To the extent that “healthcare workforce diversity” is the goal, then the admissions process could well become a means by which that target is struck.
This could mean elevating such immutable characteristics as race, gender, or national origin above academic or intellectual merit.
Similarly, if one believes that “health inequities” are prevalent and result from insufficient diversity — and if one is also in charge of a highly competitive medical-school admissions process — then one may be tempted to use the latter to address the former.
As it happens, we do not merely have to imagine these things. Willies-Jacobo discusses them herself in the aforementioned NAAMA video.
According to Willies-Jacobo, KPSOM “now get[s] close to 7,000 applications … for 50 spots” each year (6:00), so it “really is through a mission-aligned lens” that the office judges applicants.
The goal of the admissions team, Willies-Jacobo continues, is to understand the “experiences [applicants have] brought with them throughout [their] journey” (7:18).
Willies-Jacobo and her staff think that admissions success is a matter of “ensuring that [applicants are], in fact, aligned with the mission of the school” (7:25) — a mission that, as expressed in the institution’s formal “Vision,” involves graduates who are “committed to serving a broad range of communities” and are “courageous leaders of change.”
(Additionally, KPSOM’s “values” include “Equity,” promoted by “advancing access, opportunities, and outcomes for members of the KPSOM community.”)
Finally, Willies-Jacobo asserts that KPSOM wants applicants who have “at least begun to think about the concept of advancing equity in health” (7:54).
As the physician-administrator’s own words make plain, her DEI proclivities are clearly seeping into her role leading the KPSOM admissions office.
Indeed, Willies-Jacobo’s reference to “mission align[ment]” should be understood as exactly what it is: a confession that the admissions office is considering applicant criteria that are neither academic nor objective.
The same is obviously true of her reference to applicants’ “experiences” and willingness to “advanc[e] equity in health.” The former is an easy stand-in for race and ethnicity, while the latter is straightforward ideological screening.
To put it another way, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the fox isn’t merely guarding the henhouse in the KPSOM admissions office. She’s in charge of it.
Do No Harm Report Exposes University of Texas System Medical Schools for Hiding Admissions Data
COMMENTARY Texas DEI University of Texas - Austin School of Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center Houston McGovern School of Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch - Galveston, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School Medical School Press Release Do No Harm StaffSALT LAKE CITY, UT: June 16, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm released an analysis by David Puelz, PhD, a professor at the University of Austin (UATX), on Texas medical-school admissions and called for the University of Texas System to stop concealing admissions data from the academic years since Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA).
In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in SFFA that racial preferences in college admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Following that decision, Do No Harm sent public-records requests to every public medical school in the country — including the seven in the University of Texas System — requesting post-SFFA admissions data. That information should be publicly available and is necessary to verify whether these institutions have ended illegal racial preferences. Regrettably, the seven medical schools in the UT System declined to provide the requested data.
“The silence from the University of Texas System is deafening,” said Ian Kingsbury, Sr. Director of Do No Harm’s Center for Accountability in Medicine. “Dr. Puelz’s in-depth analysis shows that before the Students for Fair Admissions decision, at least some Texas medical schools were heavily discriminating against white and Asian applicants, raising questions about whether race-conscious practices have continued or were rebranded to allow racial favoritism to persist. If they’re in compliance with federal law, why are UT medical schools stonewalling our public-records requests and refusing to provide post-SFFA admissions data? We will pursue every legal, legislative, and public-advocacy recourse until full compliance with the Supreme Court’s ruling is achieved nationwide.”
Click here to read the report.
David Puelz’s analysis examines pre-SFFA admissions at three Texas schools: Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine, UT Austin Dell Medical School, and UT Southwestern Medical School. His findings indicate that, before SFFA, each school preferred black applicants over academically identical white and Asian applicants.
For example, at UT Southwestern, black applicants had 21 times the odds of acceptance compared to white applicants with similar academic credentials.
Do No Harm’s Skirting SCOTUS Part III report showed that, at Texas Tech’s school of medicine, average MCAT scores among accepted students continued to show significant racial disparities after SFFA. Overall, it appears that admissions practices at the institution barely changed after the Supreme Court’s ruling against race-conscious admissions. Whether a similar scenario is playing out at UT Austin Dell and UT Southwestern — and the other UT medical schools — is information to which the public and lawmakers are entitled.
The seven medical schools in the UT System are:
To read Dr. Puelz’s analysis, click here.
Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.
HealthStream’s ‘Implicit Bias’ Module Has Improved … But Not Enough
COMMENTARY DEI accrediting organization, Healthcare resource, Nursing organization Commentary Do No Harm StaffMonths after a complaint by Do No Harm’s chief medical officer, a woke continuing medical education (CME) course previously certified for credit no longer holds that designation — at least for physicians. Yet the course is still widely available, albeit in altered form, and continues to substitute progressive ideology for useful healthcare instruction.
HealthStream’s “Implicit Bias for Clinicians” course “present[s] strategies and interventions … to reduce bias and improve culturally competent care across individual, organizational, and broad-scale settings.”
Its ideological buttress is the notion that “[i]mplicit bias impacts healthcare in many ways” and that “how healthcare professionals perceive, diagnose, and treat patients … causes significant healthcare disparities in access, quality, and outcomes.”
Until recently, the course was accredited by both the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). Now, however, only the course’s ANCC accreditation remains.
Do No Harm might reasonably take some credit for that development.
On February 1, 2026, Do No Harm’s Dr. Kurt Miceli filed a complaint with the ACCME, pointing out the course’s violation of “several key standards” set forth by the organization.
Specifically, Dr. Miceli wrote, the course “is highly ideological and politically charged with few, if any, references to the science.”
Moreover, it “fails to provide a fair and balanced perspective … introduces bias, makes unsubstantiated claims, and promotes ideological advocacy that undermines the objectivity of medical education.”
A look at the “Implicit Bias for Clinicians” training then offered supports Dr. Miceli’s assertions.
Contending that “implicit bias is a public health problem,” the course instructed learners on “white privilege,” an “inherent set of advantages, benefits, and entitlements … bestowed on people due to the presentation of the color of their skin.”
It warned against “white supremacy” and stated baldly that “[w]hite people dominate society in the U.S. to the detriment of other racial and ethnic groups.”
It urged practitioners to “recognize and acknowledge that every person holds implicit biases, including yourself.”
Happily, this ideological and unscientific material has been largely eliminated from HealthStream’s course. To the extent that the February complaint spurred a revision, we will take the win.
However, the material that remains, while considerably less provocative, is nevertheless unsound.
For example, and as its name makes clear, the course continues to be built upon the cracked foundation of “implicit bias,” a debunked, pseudoscientific construct that posits “unconscious” racism where no visible prejudice exists.
It appeals to the flawed Implicit Association Test (IAT), a vehicle designed to demonstrate users’ unconscious racism by measuring how quickly they match, e.g., black or white faces to positive or negative words.
The nurses who avail themselves of this continuing-education opportunity will not find that their skills or knowledge have been improved.
Rather, they will have wasted their time on ideologically driven content designed to signal the “virtue” of its creators and to introduce progressive orthodoxies into healthcare practice.
The fact that HealthStream’s course has been stripped of its worst elements is a very good thing. Nevertheless, the fact that it still exists at all is an ongoing problem.
UW Medicine’s DEI Office Is Ridiculously Bloated
COMMENTARY Washington DEI University of Washington School of Medicine Health system Commentary Do No Harm StaffHow many DEI apparatchiks does it take to create a zone of perfect social justice? At UW Medicine, a health system comprising the University of Washington School of Medicine and other medical centers and facilities, the answer is apparently a startling 38.
A glance at the system’s Office of Healthcare Equity (OHCE) website provides few clues about what these highly trained men and women do all day.
Among the office’s boilerplate pronouncements are that “everyone should have the same access and opportunities for the best possible [healthcare] outcomes” and that physicians should work to “eliminate inequities.” Standard stuff.
The office’s work product comprises in large part such typical business as “spotlight series,” newsletters, and “resource fair” participation.
Nor does scanning employees’ titles clear things up.
OHCE lists five workers at the “assistant” level (e.g., assistant dean for equity, diversity & inclusion in research) and a whopping 13 at the level of “director.” Yet what work, for example, does an executive director of workforce inclusion and healthcare system equity actually perform? The answer is left entirely to the imagination.
Ideological preening is certainly on that list of tasks. Between them, OHCE’s 38 employees list 77 pronouns, among them not only “she” and “he” but “they” and “ella.” (Using one’s pronoun list to signal Spanish-language proficiency is a curious development.)
Unique references to “equity” (8), “inclusion” (5), and “diversity” (4) abound in employees’ titles, as does newfangled aspirational lingo (e.g., “transformational research”). Faced with the latter, OHCE’s four project managers must feel as if their titles are positively dull.
Why is this happening?
As the U.S. Department of Education has made clear, educational institutions accepting federal funds may not engage in racial discrimination in their “admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, sanctions, discipline, and beyond” (emphases added).
Nor, at least arguably, may hospital systems that act as de facto federal contractors by accepting Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement.
DEI offices, no matter what they currently call themselves, often contravene this prohibition through practices that cast serious doubt on their adherence to established civil‑rights obligations.
Yet, in the case of UW Medicine’s OHCE, the problem also strikes a fiscal note.
According to publicly available data, the office’s employees have cost the state more than $18 million in salary alone since 2021. Though some OHCE employees may have roles in (and receive some of their pay from) other areas of the system, this figure nevertheless represents a massive expenditure.
If UW Medicine wants to tighten its belt or redirect its funds to actual medical education and treatment, it should markedly trim its OHCE numbers.
If it wants to comply with federal guidance and the spirit of federal civil-rights law, it should shutter the office altogether.