Unethical Expectations: How Accreditors Inject Identity Politics into Medical and Healthcare Education

Over the past decade, medical and healthcare education programs have increasingly shifted their missions toward political and social activism. Rather than focus their efforts on best preparing healthcare professionals through rigorous training and education, program administrators and faculty have instead worked to advance “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) ideology. Do No Harm has documented this phenomenon in comprehensive research projects such as “Activism Instead of Anatomy: The Sorry State of Medical School Curricula,” as well as through dozens of blogs on individual instances of medical school malfeasance.

Yet overlooked in this dynamic is the role accreditors play in setting the administrative,
curricular, and cultural standards of these programs. As the bodies recognized by the
federal government for ensuring educational quality, accreditors have enormous power
over the policies medical education programs implement – and their particular ideological flavor.

This influence becomes a serious problem when abused to impose DEI requirements on medical education programs and complicates efforts to reform discriminatory and divisive DEI practices. In fact, recalcitrant medical schools in states with DEI bans have even pointed to accreditation standards to justify their DEI programs and offices.

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