Dr. Kurt Miceli is the chief medical officer of Do No Harm—an organization of doctors, patients, and others who want to keep identity politics and DEI policies out of healthcare.
He spoke with Liz Collin on her podcast about how information obtained from a records request exposes not only a radical agenda based on identity politics at Hennepin Healthcare—but also how they tried to hide it from the public.
WATCH:
The findings pose even more questions about the leadership, finances, and policies in the hospital system following a move by the Minnesota legislature to offer financial help as Hennepin County Medical Center (operated by Hennepin Healthcare) faces a $50 million shortfall.
Adding to the financial troubles, some of the shocking details that Dr. Miceli and Do No Harm uncovered indicate that the hospital spent a lot of time and resources on DEI policies and initiatives.
Dr. Miceli spoke about how the work of Dr. Nneka Sederstrom, who held the title of chief health equity officer at Hennepin Health Care, caught his attention.
But it was her emails that concerned Dr. Miceli even more.
He explained how Dr. Sederstrom was sending emails to others and talked about changing the names and titles of DEI positions to get around mandates from the Trump administration to cease DEI-related practices.
One particular email that was sent to Dr. Sederstrom was from Steve Simpson, a professor of medicine at the University of Kansas. The subject of Simpson’s email states, “I will be going to jail with you, Nneka.”
But Dr. Sederstrom’s reply seemed even more telling: “We will stay the course.”
Dr. Miceli also highlighted how one of Dr. Sederstrom’s emails mentioned “the eight identities of whiteness.”
“It is just part and parcel to the nature of critical social justice, which is this postmodern neo-Marxist ideology that looks towards really a deconstruction of what we have,” Dr. Miceli said.
Additionally, he explained that the information Do No Harm received indicates that some Hennepin Healthcare employees were trying to promote pro-transgender medicine for minors.
This included an effort to get doctors to sign a group letter to the editor of The Minnesota Star Tribune to promote gender medicine for youth as “safe, effective, and necessary.”
“This is not what healthcare should be about,” Dr. Miceli said.
NEW: Hennepin Healthcare mandatory DEI training includes lessons on the “white fragility process”
Also, a sign in nurse admin on how to talk about racism includes the words “stop taking care of white people.”
(Submitted to Alpha News)
A hospital spokesperson says that sign… https://t.co/J8EHMIEUh3 pic.twitter.com/52diUok3Pu
— Liz Collin (@lizcollin) September 26, 2025
“Doctors and nurses go to work each and every day to do their very best for the patients before them and likewise, patients seek doctors for their excellence and quality. It’s not about identity politics, but yet here we see at Hennepin Healthcare, it seems to be about identity. And that is a real problem,” he said.
Along with DEI initiatives and promoting a pro-transgender medicine agenda, Dr. Miceli spoke about how documents revealed practices at the hospital that do not focus on merit.
Dr. Miceli told Collin that hiring and promotions in healthcare should be based on merit and excellence to provide “the very best to patients.”
In speaking about a particular program, the Compass Program, he said it “seems to have taken as its cause of making Hennepin HealthCare an anti-racist institution.”
Dr. Miceli said, “it’s sort of this anti-racism in the view of Ibram Kendi, which speaks to the fact that you need present discrimination to correct past discrimination. Again, this is a divisive, neo-Marxist ideology. It has no place in healthcare.”
“Everybody, whether you’re black, white, Asian, whatever you are, whatever your race, you want the very best provider. And certainly in the case of healthcare, if you’re in that emergency department or if you’re in that surgical OR table, you don’t care what color your physician is. You care about the quality of the work that they provide, their excellence in care. And that’s, again, something that we have to continue to work for,” Dr. Miceli said.
In pointing out some of the key principles in modern-day medicine, Dr. Miceli emphasized how doctors need to focus on “our Hippocratic oath and our responsibilities to patient care and to excellence and not to be distracted and dissuaded by ideology that tears us apart, but to work together in a way that allows us to really build great things for folks … And to do that, we need to get this ideology out.”
Hennepin Healthcare did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Previously, the system told Alpha News that it “affirms its commitment to creating a safe, inclusive environment for all.”
“Our health equity and anti-racism trainings are developed with this goal in mind,” the statement said. “We continue to deepen our commitment to health equity and embed principles of anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion to our work.”
Liz Collin
Liz Collin is a multi-Emmy-Award-winning investigative reporter, news anchor, and producer who cares about Minnesota. She is the producer of The Fall of Minneapolis and Minnesota v We the People documentary films, and author of the Amazon best-selling book, They’re Lying: The Media, the Left, and The Death of George Floyd. Her work has prompted important state laws. Yet perhaps most of all, Liz has been giving a voice to the truth—and helping others tell their stories—for more than 20 years.
Dr. JC Chaix
Dr. JC Chaix is an editor, educator, and an expert in media studies. He wrote and directed the Alpha News documentary "The Fall of Minneapolis" and "Minnesota v We the People."
