The University of Minnesota Medical School is one of several medical schools participating in a three-year “Anti-Racist Transformation in Medical Education” program.
According to the organizer, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the program will proceed through six stages and conclude in May 2024. Phase names include “Preparing for Change,” “Creating Climate for Change,” and “Implementing and Sustaining Change.”
A webpage explaining the “program background” claims that racism in the medical field “continues to perpetuate the racial power dynamics present among us today.”
“Medical education and biomedical research have been shaped by a legacy of racial injustice, and most medical schools have a history of de-emphasizing or simply ignoring this legacy,” the page reads. “Racism in the learning and work environment of medical school can only be mitigated through a formal change management process that leads to change that is institutionally transformational, and individually transformative.”
Joining the University of Minnesota Medical School in the program are top medical schools like the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Duke University School of Medicine.
The program page states that these and several other schools were intentionally selected because they “represent the most diverse geographic locations, types of school, years founded, and current activities and resources dedicated to addressing racism.”
According to Campus Reform, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation spent over $377,000 to fund the program. The foundation claims it is the only one in the U.S. “dedicated solely to improving the education of health professionals.” It has funded projects like “A National Approach to Reducing LGBTQ+ Health Disparities” and a task force on “diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism (DEIAR) in healthcare.”
Over the past two decades the medical profession has become saturated with social justice initiatives and rhetoric. Medical schools no longer recognize the physical health of the patient as the sole purpose of medicine; they now also incorporate “social and community responsibility” as integral to its practice, and they have veered far to the left on issues of race, sex, gender, and bodily autonomy.
Evan Stambaugh
Evan Stambaugh is a freelance writer who had previously been a sports blogger. He has a BA in theology and an MA in philosophy.
