Education

Academics Who Want DEI In Med Schools Dodge And Weave When Pro-Merit Doctor Says Its A Political Agenda

(Quinn Dombrowski, CC via Wikimedia Commons)

Members of academic medicine gathered in Florida on Friday to debate whether diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) — or whatever name people decide to call it — should play a role in medical school admissions.

The University of South Florida in Tampa hosted a panel of four experts to share insights from their experiences with the medical school admissions process. The panel debated whether MCAT scores and academic grades should be sufficient criteria for accepting students into a program — or whether race and identity-based factors should also be taken into consideration.

“Only a third of medical school applicants are accepted each year, the criteria that should be valued is keen intellect, strong work ethic, strong moral code, and penetrating curiosity for the study of medicine,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, one of the debate’s speakers, said during the event. “Race and ethnicity is irrelevant, unfair, and illegal.”

Goldfarb is the founder of “Do No Harm,” a policy organization working in part to keep identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice. He said diversity-centered approach to admissions is a political agenda and expressed criticism for the criteria the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) uses to select medical school candidates.

Factors that are considered as part of AAMC’s “holistic” approach to selecting applicants include citizenship, distance travelled, relationship status, involvement in cultural events, and sexual orientation, according to its Roadmap to Diversity.

Throughout the debate, other participants steered the conversation away from the idea that some med-school applicants have been favored over others because of their race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

Instead of using the term DEI, multiple panelists said they preferred to call their preferred identity-based approach “holistic admissions” — similar to the term used in the AAMC’s Roadmap to Diversity — “inclusive excellence” or “situational judgement.”

“DEI is a term that’s often the basis of what we’re talking about, the basis of a lot of our goals, which is trying to have more diversity in our physician workforce, trying to achieve health equity, trying to have an inclusive environment,” Dr. Bonzo Reddick said during the debate. “But I do want to kind of break down some of those words because a lot of these things are kind of turning to modern day boogeymen when you hear them, right? So you hear a lot of people moving away from the term holistic admissions because it kind of gets juxtaposed against merit.”

Reddick — now the health director of the Georgia Department of Public Health Coastal District — spent six years as the associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Mercer University in Georgia. He received a Telehealth Equity Catalyst Award from the AAMC in 2023, according to Mercer’s news website The Den.

Reddick argued that so-called “holistic admissions” is not about quotas or having a certain percentage of people in place.

“It’s just saying overall you’re going to have a better environment, be able to meet the needs of patients if you have people from a lot of different backgrounds,” he said during the debate.

Dr. Henri Ford, who previously served on the board of directors at AAMC, did not appear to directly address the concerns that Dr. Goldfarb raised — and proceeded to argue that other factors besides academic performance must be considered.

“We can’t just look at test scores. The factors that we consider, especially since I’m trying to produce transformational leaders, is students’ maturity level, their lived experience, resilience, grit factor, personal drive or dedication, demonstrated interest in improving human suffering or the human condition in general,” Ford said during the debate. “I will look for evidence of the what I call the four Cs: the caring, considerate, compassionate, and collaborative.”

Ford said that the best candidates for good doctors that he looks for are those who have overcome socio-economic hardship and who did not come from privileged backgrounds — because those candidates have the best resilience and can demonstrate true compassion.

However, Goldfarb articulated his belief that medical school admissions should be a highly competitive environment and an applicant’s excellence in undergraduate academics and MCAT scores — not immutable characteristics of compassion — should be the absolute factors contributing toward whether or not they are ultimately accepted.

“Data shows that individuals who have the highest MCAT scores do the best. Your MCAT score predicts your success, not your race,” he said.

Goldfarb noted that when his wife had ovarian cancer, he had to deal with multiple physicians. He said that “some of them were jerks, but they were brilliant, and I was really happy that they gave her the best care possible.”

“I know it’s wonderful if compassion is the primary issue, but at the end of the day, you really want to get better. You want to get the best care possible,” the Do No Harm founder emphasized.

“A colorblind, merit-based admission process at all medical schools will produce diversity as a consequence of the excellence of all the physicians who are accepted,” Goldfarb said at the debate. “This is what we must strive for in recruiting the individual American healthcare workforce.”