As an increasing number of private companies walk back their “diversity, equity and inclusion” policies, the American medical research establishment is doing the opposite and doubling down on studies driven by “critical race theory” that blame “structural racism” for a medical establishment that allegedly discriminates against Black people. 

In 2022 alone, the National Institute of Health, the government’s $45 billion medical research colossus, provided nearly $300 million in funding for medical studies focused on racism and other health projects that promote a DEI narrative, according to a study by the College Fix. 

In one study, to be completed in 2027, the NIH is allocating $559,000 to a University of Washington study titled “Applying Critical Race Theory to Investigate the impact of COVID-19-related Policy Changes on racial/ethnic disparities in medication treatment for opioid use disorder.” The study’s methodology is “public Health Critical race praxis,” a listing on the NIH website details.

Since the start of 2024, the NIH has funded 124 projects associated in some form to studying structural racism in medicine. By comparison, the agency has funded 276 prenatal projects, 4,259 cancer projects, and 1,815 diabetes projects. 

Among the most recent NIH-funded projects on racism was a study on “Racism-Related Trauma and Mental Health Disparities Among Black Youth” at the University of Missouri. The agency provided the study with more than $160 thousand in funding. 

The most recent project related to racism funded by the NIH is a study examining the negative impact of “community policing” for “Black and Latinx/a/o older adults” and its supposed role in triggering the onset of dementia in those populations. The project is run by researchers at Columbia University who received $125,000 from the federal agency.  

The study’s abstract states that, “The National Institute of Aging’s Health Disparities Research Framework identifies political factors as a priority area of research on aging.” The study elaborates on the political factors to be studied as “historical police-sanctioned lynchings during early life, to police-involved killings, arrests, and incarcerations of Black and Latinx/a/o persons during midlife.”

Research on the impact of race on healthcare has garnered greater attention since the death of George Floyd in 2020 led to an increased focus on race in American society. Studies by the Kaiser Family Foundation purport to demonstrate that Black, Hispanic, and Asian minorities all fared worse relative to white Americans across measures of healthcare coverage and use of care. Studies of this ilk have been influential in medical care facilities, which have been on the forefront of implementing DEI programming into patient care. 

Not all experts are on board with the research, however. In 2022, the former associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, created an organization devoted to fighting back against DEI in the medical field. 

According to its website, the group is critical of providing different levels of care to people of different races and genders. “At least 23 of America’s top 25 medical schools have made anti-racism a core part of their curriculum, while other institutions are creating anti-racist curricula to be implemented at schools nationwide,” the nonprofit states on its website. “This divisive campaign will only lead to discrimination in healthcare, which is bad for patients.”

In an opinion piece in the Journal filed in April, Dr. Goldfarb took particular issue of how CRT and DEI is shaping medical school curriculum. The doctor wrote that “Medical schools increasingly are preparing physicians for social activism at the expense of medical science. Such student groups as White Coats for Black Lives demand that administrators reframe curriculum around reparations for slavery, decarceration of prisoners, and other topics with no bearing on training doctors to care for individual patients. Medical schools and residencies are lowering admissions standards. The result will be fewer talented physicians providing high-quality care to fewer patients.”