How a North Carolina Republican threatens the mission of California medical schools | Opinion
Before Congress is a proposal that would prevent federal funding from going to medical schools that incorporate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies into their institutions.
This would be devastating in California, where our public system of medical schools recruits and trains students to serve the diverse residents of our state.
At UC San Francisco Medical School, for example, the curriculum is focused on addressing and dismantling structural racism in medicine and medicine education. Students are taught to understand bias. Policies and evaluations of courses seek to reduce the effects of systemic racism.
Rep. Greg Murphy, R-North Carolina, recently introduced the Embracing Anti-Discrimination, Unbiased Curricula, and Advancing Truth (EDUCATE) Act. Alabama, Tennessee and Utah have already introduced similar legislation for public universities with the same goal: hindering educational equity by curtailing inclusion efforts. Specifically, the EDUCATE Act would: “Cut off federal funding to medical schools that force students or faculty to adopt specific beliefs, discriminate based on race or ethnicity, or have diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices or any functional equivalent. “
Opinion
A strength of the University of California medical schools that draws prospective future physicians is the “track” programs. UC campuses at Davis, Riverside, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Irvine and San Diego each incorporate tracks specifically dedicated to preparing students to serve rural, urban, tribal and under-resourced communities.
While interest in serving underserved populations in medical school generally decreases throughout training, medical students from underserved backgrounds maintain the greatest interest in serving these communities — underscoring the importance of encouraging medical students from underrepresented backgrounds to join these tracks meant to support underserved communities.
The ratification of the EDUCATE Act would put all California public medical school funding at risk, including allocations to track programs. The broad, sweeping language of this legislation will require medical institutions to change their focus from supporting students of diverse backgrounds to proving to governmental bodies that they are not promoting diversity. California medical institutions are not prepared — nor should they need to be — for this change.
Our California medical schools are built to educate the future physician workforce to serve our diverse state, and that goal is inherent to our mission. The EDUCATE Act is an attack on this idea, which remains at the core of our passion for medicine.
Accepting the rhetoric of the EDUCATE Act is a dangerous precedent. In promoting his act, Murphy claims that the concept of DEI is a “dangerous and contagious philosophy.” However, he fails to acknowledge that there is no peer-reviewed research supporting this so-called “truth.” California medical schools are not allowed to utilize affirmative action based on the prior passage of Proposition 209, and DEI programs do not circumvent this rule.
The supposed goal of the EDUCATE Act is to improve healthcare performance based on excellence in education, but it would prevent students from participating in federal student loan programs at institutions with DEI programs. This creates a choice for medical schools: cut DEI programs or shift the burden of funding to students through higher-interest private loans.
Dismantling track programs would harm far more than just the students in those programs. As a medical student in one of the most diverse medical schools in the country, I have learned just as much from my classmates in how to care for patients as I have from my professors precisely because of my peers’ lived experiences — something they will carry into their practice.
Regardless of whether the EDUCATE Act is passed into law or not, it is indicative of a larger problem: States are already ratifying similar legislation, and students have no voice in the matter. This is not a problem we can address later without a significant negative impact on our patients.
We will not stand for these policies becoming part of the medical school admissions process. We do not want this, we do not believe our patients want this and we are certain that this change will not better serve our patients.
Joe Morrison is an MD/PhD student with a research focus on health equity and medical education. Maydha Dhanuka and Alisha Khieu provided valuable insights for this topic regarding their relevant experiences which informed this op-ed.
