Racial preferences in faculty hiring and student admissions are a “strategic priority for academic medicine,” the nation’s largest consortium of medical schools says.
The racial priority appears in an open letter to 157 medical schools, academic societies, teaching hospitals and health systems written by David J. Skorton, president and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges, and David A. Acosta, the group’s chief diversity and inclusion officer.
“Throughout the country, we continue to be challenged with misinformation, disinformation, and misguided anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) actions that are confronting higher education and our academic medical institutions and that will harm the health of our communities,” the two physicians said in the letter, published online Monday. “We want to underscore that the AAMC is here to support your efforts to lead in the name of diversity, equity, inclusion, and racial justice.”
Dr. Skorton and Dr. Acosta praised medical schools that “for decades” have “ensured the recruitment of diverse classes of talented learners — including medical, graduate, and PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, and residents.”
“This is critical for all future physicians and scientists to build their knowledge foundation and skills to improve the health of patients and communities,” they added.
The letter comes as the Supreme Court is weighing a challenge to academic affirmative action programs, with a ruling expected in the next few weeks.
It affirms a broader movement to “embed” racial justice in the medical profession that has grown since the 2020 murder of George Floyd in police custody and subsequent anti-racism protests.
For example, the American Medical Association has posted on its website a “strategic plan to embed racial justice” in the medical profession within the next two years.
The AMA pledges to “play a more prominent role in the current national reckoning on equity and justice” by using its “training platforms, programs, advocacy, communication and marketing infrastructure” as “levers for change.”
Some medical professionals have pushed back on the AAMC and AMA language, saying it overlooks income differences in a rush to blame racism for poor health outcomes among minorities.
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a former associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, warns that it will politicize medicine in a way that hurts patients.
“In order to improve the health of various underprivileged communities, American medicine needs to increase health care access for those communities. It doesn’t need to send physicians to implicit bias training, nor does it need to alter the way health care is practiced,” said Dr. Goldfarb, who founded the nonprofit Do No Harm in April 2022 to fight “woke health care.”
“Diversity is fine as long as it does not detract from recruiting the best and brightest students to be healthcare providers. To the extent that there is compromise in that rigor and that excellence, diversity will undermine the trust that patients need to have in their physicians,” he added in an email on Tuesday.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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