EXCLUSIVE: Medical advocacy group launching anti-DEI courses for Michigan practitioners

LANSING, Mich. (TND) — A medical advocacy organization is launching licensing courses Wednesday for Michigan practitioners opposed to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) education.

Do No Harm, which resists DEI frameworks in medical research and practice, will offer doctors and nurses continuing medical education classes focused on refuting progressive initiatives. The training will meet Michigan state requirements.

“It really does provide a service to individuals who don’t want to go and sit through something that really goes against their better judgement and their view of the way they treat their patients,” Do No Harm Board Chair Stanley Goldfarb told The National Desk (TND).

The organization will provide materials discrediting implicit bias training, which informs people of their ingrained biases, in a three-part course. The class will also discuss critical race theory, anti-racism and racial concordance.

“It allows us to point out the deficiency of this ideology that’s been proposed because we can point to the data that don’t support it,” Goldfarb said.

Michigan began requiring implicit bias training in 2022 to address racial disparities in healthcare. Goldfarb argued to TND increasing diversity would be an ineffective solution to remedying disadvantages faced by people of color.

“People are saying, ‘12% of the population is Black people and therefore 12% should be physicians.’ That’s a quota system that’s been rejected over and over in all sorts of educational settings, and it ought to be rejected again in this setting,” he stated. “We should pick the best and brightest, and if they’re all Black, terrific. And if they’re not, terrific also.”

READ MORE | Medical professors rewarded for focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion, report finds

A 2023 study found increasing Black representation in the healthcare industry would help improve Black people’s health. Do No Harm's course will push back on such research.

“Diversity has a place, I guess. I haven’t quite identified exactly where that should be the criteria for anybody getting a position in this modern age when there’s plenty of opportunity for people to get positions that they’re seeking,” Goldfarb said. “But nonetheless, I don’t think anybody should be discriminated against, nor should anybody be discriminated for.”

Do No Harm has suggested standard medical courses use cherry-picked data to support their materials.

“They pursue the narrative that the left tends to pursue – that racism is endemic in American life, and specifically the disparities that are well-documented and well-known between the healthcare outcomes for White and Black individuals’ communities is due to bias on the part of physicians,” Goldfarb asserted. “Often there’s no data at all.”

Follow Ray Lewis on X for trending national news @rayjlewis or send a tip to rjlewis@sbgtv.com.