The University of Minnesota has created a training course to inculcate medical professionals with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) talking points, specifically that healthcare is fundamentally racist.
According to a report by the Daily Caller News Foundation, the online program, which cost the university $219,633 to put together, includes claims that “structural racism is a public health crisis” and that it is up to health professionals to “help counteract the burdens of structural racism for black and indigenous people.”
According to the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), the course was developed to meet requirements established by the Dignity in Pregnancy and Childbirth Act passed by Minnesota in 2021. The act mandated that hospitals housing obstetric care and birthing centers “make available a continuing education course on anti-racism training and implicit bias.”
A presentation on the MDH website, after the mandatory land acknowledgement, blames implicit bias in healthcare for “discrimination, declined care for black patients” as well as “worse health outcomes for black patients.” A curriculum evaluation form from the MDH, to which the University of Minnesota’s program was also subject, includes requirements that courses include “information on the ongoing effects of historical and contemporary exclusion and oppression” of “black communities” and “indigenous communities.”
The University of Minnesota’s course curriculum does not deviate from these ideological standards. Documents from the course include a timeline from 1619 to the present, showcasing various apparent cases of how racial prejudice has impacted treatment of blacks in America.
In particular, the presentation attributes initial alleged structural racism in America to the treatment of slaves in 1619, “who were seen as investments and dehumanized as property.” Furthermore, the timeline contains no evidence of medical progress or improved treatment of blacks with the end of segregation, claiming that “studies still find racial inequities in pain care, including postpartum pain.”
Diversity Science, the developers of the course, allege that the course’s intention is to help healthcare professionals “learn strategies to interrupt institutional racism and racial bias and protect the health and well-being of Black and Indigenous mothers, birthing people, and infants.”
The group’s website also states that the course “will equip clinicians and providers to interrupt racism and provide bias-free and equitable perinatal care for Black and Indigenous Birthing People.” Evidently, without this DEI training, properly treating patients regardless of skin color would be an impossible task for health professionals.
If they were concerned about properly educating the medical professionals under their tutelage, the University of Minnesota could have spent the money used to create this course on training health care professionals how to more effectively address patient pain and discomfort. Instead, the university seems to have taken a course of inflicting pain and discomfort on their students with DEI ideology.